


Elska

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: Felicity has a Cracking Good Time [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Complete, Costume Kink, Crack Relationships, Cunnilingus, Declarations Of Love, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, He uses the hammer he keeps in his pants, Loki being a little shit, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Pining, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Thor soft AF, Thorlicity, Water Sex, costume fetish, gavin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2019-07-18 05:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16111874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: Elska is Nordic for Love.Born to Odin's chief advisor and the mortal woman he fell in love with, Felicity Smoak was half mortal, half Asgardian; never really sure where she fitted in.When she was 12 she decided to leave her home and her best friend behind.9 years later, they meet again and a lot has changed...||COMPLETE||





	1. Goda Nott |Good Night|

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wanted Thorlicity PWP for my birthday. My muse had other ideas and now, it seems, i have this adorable friends to lovers multi chapter fic crying out to be written...
> 
> Ps: Oliver doesn't exist in this universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE DO NOT UPLOAD THIS FIC TO ANY THIRD PARTY WEBSITE.
> 
> Respect what I've spent so long creating. Thank you.

The sound of glee echoed down the long, opulent halls of the Palace as the warm sun streamed in and played majestically with lights and shadows across it’s marbled floors. The game was hide and seek and the older of the three, a boy barely 9, was running down the passage ways in search of his prey.

She knew the younger boy would be nearly impossible to find as he was learning magic at the feet of both his mother and the grand sorcerers; but she was certain her wonderful hiding place would keep her concealed long enough for it to _at least_ be a challenge.

It was a tight fit in the ornamental vase she had managed to twist her small body into and she could hear him as he walked past, each step a heavy _thud_ on the polished marble despite only being 2 years older than her.

She couldn’t help herself – she tried, she really did, but when she heard his exacerbated sigh, she let out a faint giggle which, in the echo-chamber where she was hiding, might as well have been a chesty laugh from a warrior returning victorious.

And just like that the game was up.

“Found you!” he announced boisterously as the blonde prince with the sky-blue eyes and a smile that always lifted higher on one side than the other and often resonated into the apples of his cheeks peered over the lip of the vase, chuffed with his find.

She started laughing hysterically at the face of a friend she’d known for longer than she could remember; he was a part of her very first memories and almost every notable one after. Undeniably he was her best friend. He actually very well might be her _only_ friend, for reasons she had learned to accept. Reasons which once again would become very pointedly obvious.

As he helped her out of the vase, the two of them in fits of youthful laughter, her foot slipped on the polished edge of the rim. He almost caught her. _He very nearly did_. But her small body slipped just out of reach of his arms and she fell _hard_ onto the unforgiving floor.

She let out a noise that stopped his breath in his throat and he fell to his knees in front of her. “Felicity?” he asked as worry pinched his brow inwards and shadowed his usually pale eyes.  
There were tears streaming down her once smiling cheeks and her small, pinkish lips were quivering as she held her wrist in a vice grip.

The Prince’s governess ran to their aid but his fiercely protective glare kept her at arm’s length.  
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, the beginnings of a dulcet tone starting to deepen his voice from the one she had grown up knowing.  
She bit her lip and did her best to will her tears to stay behind her eyes, putting on a brave face. “My wrist hurts,” she answered timidly, embarrassed that she did not pick herself up so easily as no doubt he would have.  
But she never saw even a flinch of apathy in his eyes. “Can you walk?”  
She nodded before he helped her to her feet. He was much taller than her and it seemed like every year he grew twice as fast as she could ever hope to.

   
**| ><|**  
**| |**

It was only a small fracture, something that would heal in time and after her wrist and forearm were strapped tightly she waited for the inevitable lecture from her father. It came with a glass of spring water and a pensive sigh as they sat at the table in their Palace chambers.

“You mustn’t forget, you are only part Asgardian and part human,” he remarked as his weathered hand raked through his greying hair.  
_How could she forget?_ She was reminded of that almost every day.

Some were amused by her; she was like an exhibit the children would point to and whisper to each other about. She was not as fast or as strong or as big as anyone else, but she was just as smart – if not smarter, a fact which only seemed to cement their annoyance at her existence.

_She always had him though, her best friend._

She was the daughter of one of Odin’s most trusted advisors and the mortal from earth he fell in love with. Her mother died not long after Felicity was born and her father never spoke of her, his heart never really able to heal from the loss. She had family on earth, an Aunt, but she had never met her and Asgard was her home.

She took a sip of water and let the cool sensation tickle the roof of her mouth before it glided down her throat. She reached out her hand and laid it on her father’s as it sat palm-up on the table. “I know father,” she admitted softly.  
He looked up at her and a smile slowly dawned over his lips.  
“You remind me of her,” he sighed and Felicity’s heart tripped over itself at the vague mention of a woman she only ever remembered in her dreams.

Her eyes widened, hoping for more, but her father simply patted her hand gently and stood up. She tried her best not to be disheartened, after all she had learned long ago not to hope too much.

She watched him walk away before she stared at the slight ripples in her glass. _How could she forget?_ Every day she was reminded of the reasons she didn’t quite fit in.

A knock on the door drew her attention and Felicity took her time, dragging her feet, to answer it. It was Thor, sitting high on the balls of his feet; as if he needed more height above her.

“Are you grounded?” he quizzed as his head lolled towards his shoulder.  
“I don’t think so,” she commented before she glanced back towards her father’s room. She shrugged. “He didn’t really say.”  
“Good, come on,” he cheered as he grabbed her unbandaged hand, but she didn’t move.  
“Where are we going?” she asked, a frown folded across her lips and a crinkle at the bridge of her nose.  
“Hunt snakes,” he announced proudly. “We love snakes.”  
She dropped her head to her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “You love snakes Thor.”  
His expression changed to bemusement. “You don’t?”  
A half-hearted shrug and a melancholy sigh. “I really don’t see the appeal.”

His full lips ruffled against each other as he considered her words before an idea came to him. “We can climb the waterfalls then, you like that don’t you?” he grinned as he spoke, certain he was onto a winning idea.  
But sadly he was not. “Nope,” she popped. “You again, and...” she held out her arm, “I don’t think I can climb anything.”  
“Oooh right,” he grimaced with an apologetic smile. “What do you want to do then?”  
“Nothing,” she chomped her tongue as she pouted her lips. “Wallow in self-pity, rearrange my dresses.” He screwed up his face. “Do my homework, read a book...”  
“Okay,” he said as he smacked his hands together.  
“Okay what?”  
“Okay you can read me a book.”  
With her hands on her hips she replied, “You don’t like books.”  
“Not true,” he argued as he plucked one of her curls. “they are excellent tools to throw at snakes.”  
Felicity’s tiny frame shook with a laugh she had tried her best to hold in, but had failed spectacularly.  
“There it is,” he announced proudly.  
“What?” she asked as her laugh tapered out.  
“Your smile,” he asserted with a debonair wink, “I thought you’d lost it for a moment.” Her laugh faded but her smile remained. “Explore Asgard with me?”  
She shook her head softly and her mousey hair tumbled over her face. “I don’t want to,” she mumbled behind a curtain of hair.  
“Come on, this is your home,” he encouraged.

She sighed heavy-hearted. “No it’s not, not really.”  
She watched his feet shuffle on the marble floor before he lifted her chin and pinned back her hair. “I thought you were supposed to be smart Felicity, why would you say something so clearly wrong?”  
“I’m only half, remember?” she pouted.  
His thumb plucked the tip of her nose as he smiled. “You’ll always be Asgardian to me.”  
“And who are you?” she squeaked.  
He puffed up his chest to answer her, “The future king and I’ll banish anyone who says otherwise about you.”

At least she always had him.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

It happened again when she was 12, only that time she really should have known better. It was late in the afternoon as the sun began to fall down the sky. The clouds were hazy tufts of white stretched across the blue expanse and birds glided above the tips of the evergreen forest. Children had gathered, much like they often did, by a river on the far side of the forest, a fair hike away from the palace; so far in fact that the highest spire of the same could only just be seen above the trees.

They were jumping from one rock to another, egging each other on in some game of wits and ability. It was not where Felicity wanted to be, but under the guise of having fun, she’d allowed Thor to talk her into it. She regretted that decision about five minutes after they arrived.

Lady Sabine was there, a girl two years Felicity's senior with legs that sprawled for miles and eyes that were a crisper blue than the finest of summer’s days. She had white gold hair and ivory skin that shimmered in the sun. She was refined, athletic and the one thing Felicity could never be, no matter how hard she wished for it, she was Asgardian. Not a half.

And not any of that _should_ matter, but for the fact Felicity wasn’t the only one to notice all of those things about Sabine. _He did too._

She wasn’t sure when things had changed, when her mind had switched from him being ‘the friend she could always count on’ to being the one her heart tensed around and her chest began to pine for. She loathed that knot she had begun to feel whenever he was near and even more so when he wasn’t, but no matter how firmly she chastised herself, her feelings never diminished. She swallowed down every thought of it though, she didn’t dare tell a soul, who would she tell anyway? She had no governess, no girlfriends …no mother.

And now there she was listening to the absurd dares of the children to one side of her while she kept her steeled eyes on the two absconded just outside of the group. The Prince and his Lady.

She shouldn’t have listened to their taunts, they were children, pretty dumb ones at that, but some infernal need to prove herself took a hold and she did, even though she knew, as she eyed up the leap from one rock to another, that it was almost a certainty; she would never make it.

She was only _half_ …

It felt like she fell in slow motion before the ground shattered her ankle.  
The pain stole her breath but she bit her lip to stop crying.  
Then their laughing started.

Thor pushed his way through the crowd and crouched beside her. “Are you okay?” he asked, and Felicity tried to keep her focus on him, and him alone, but she also wished for the ground to swallow her whole.  
“She doesn’t belong here, half mortal is still a mortal after all,” one of the boys with a thicket of snowy-blonde hair and the neck of a tree stump mocked gingerly as he placed his unusually large hands on his waist and roared with amusement.  
Felicity recognised the look in her best friend's eyes and while her fingers scrambled to his arm and she weakly whispered the word “Don’t,” it was all much too late, he was already on his feet.

One punch later and the tree stump was writhing on the ground holding his, very likely, broken nose. Wordlessly Thor turned and lifted Felicity into his arms with her legs draped over one arm and her arm coiled around his neck. He carried her like she weighed little more than a feather, all the way home.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

That time Felicity wasn’t so lucky; her ankle was broken and her pride was even more bruised, although not as much as her ear would be when her father sat her down at the table again. In an effort to delay the inevitable Felicity found herself hobbling the halls on a crutch of sorts tucked under her arm, the type a warrior would use to hold himself up on when gloriously maiming himself in a battle, sawn off by half to fit her.

Thor had been summoned while Felicity was having her ankle set and she hadn’t gotten a chance to thank him for relentlessly carrying her the entire journey home. Sure, he was the offspring of gods so it wasn’t as much of a strain on him, but even gods deserved a thank you.

That was how she ended up passing by the throne room when the booming voice of the All-Father echoed down the slate and marble.

“You are to be king one day, childish skirmishes are beneath you,” he proclaimed, a gruff in his voice that pushed Felicity into the wall to ensure she remained hidden.  
“They were making fun of her and she’s my friend,” Thor brusquely replied. She couldn’t see him but she imagined his blue eyes wild and his hand fisting at his side.  
A fruitless sigh from an agitated father and King. “What did the boy say?”  
“That she was different than us.” Felicity could hear the anger in her friend's voice. She had grown accustomed to that fact, it was one she couldn’t escape no matter what she did, Thor however took any comment on her genetics as a personal affront.  
“Son, she is.”  
She squeezed her eyes shut; even facts hurt.  
“Says who?” Thor argued with a voice that rivalled even grown men in depth.  
“She is not born of two Asgardian parents.” _Facts_. A hot tear slid down Felicity’s young cheeks, scarring it. “The sooner the both of you realise that the better.”

The Prince scoffed loud enough for Felicity to hear.  
“You will be King someday, that means recognising that.”  
“If being King means I would turn out my best friend then I renounce the throne!”

Felicity caught her gasp with her cupped hand as she heard the distant sound of guards approaching. She left before she was discovered there, but she had heard enough. She couldn’t come between the Prince and his birth right.

A warrior, a King, needed strong people around him, that wasn’t her.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

When the news travelled to him, Thor laughed it off as absurd, Felicity was his best friend if she was planning to move to Midgard, _Earth_ he would have known about it. His brother was playing tricks on him again and he’d have not a moment of it.

But when more voices were added, he realised the only way he was going to dispel the ridiculous rumours were to laugh about it with Felicity.

When she opened the door, he looked around her and saw the bags, then he saw her face and he knew before she even opened her mouth, it was true.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“You can't,” he repeated for the fourth time as he paced Felicity’s bed chambers. The same one he’d crept into, or helped her out of, the window many times before.  
“It’s better,” she sighed, answering the same way she had the three previous times. “I belong there.”  
He threw his hands into the air and huffed loudly at the perceived absurdity of what she was saying. “No more than you belong here.” His boots scuffed on the floor as he trod in circles. “Is this about Jovan? Because I will pound his face into the fountain if it is.”  
She tried her best to hide her smile behind a section of hair before she answered. “It’s not, it’s about me, I’m nearly 13.”  
“And I’m nearly 15, so what?”  
Clearly he wasn’t going to _get it_ without some sort of a diagram and flow chart, neither of which she was prepared to give him.  
She shrugged one shoulder up as her arms banded around her waif waist, her curves not yet flourished. “Women change.”  
He bounded up to her and knocked her arm gently with his fist. “You’re a girl, mostly, Flick,” he playfully teased.  
She knew he was only jesting her, a fun banter they often partook in, so she masked her hurt well enough. He was only ever going to see her one way and so were the rest of the people there. She needed to be somewhere where everyone was different and no one really noticed.

She needed to be on Earth.  
He sighed loudly as though he’d finally come to terms with what she had spent the last hour trying to explain to him. “You will you come back for visits?”  
It was phrased as a question but there was a hint of expectation in his voice.

Her father had promised to visit her on earth, but she knew it was practically forbidden for mortals to travel to Asgard, even half mortals. Her father had been granted a special favour to bring her as a baby, but once she left she knew she could not so easily return. But she couldn’t bear the thought of saying that out loud, especially not to him. So she offered him a smile and a nod despite knowing it was unlikely.

“Why would anyone want to go to earth? You’ll see, you’ll hate it and want to come right back,” he announced.

He said the same thing as he waved her off at the edge of the Bifrost a few days later and it made her smile that time too.

He always could make her smile.

 

* * *

  **| >9 years later<|**

  
It was spring. Felicity adored spring. The trees stopped looking so bare, the sun started to warm up and the days somehow didn’t feel quite so long. So, despite the fact it was after 6pm when she walked out through the front doors of Kord Industries, the warm air brushed against her face and she felt a level of contentment wash over her.

She found herself glancing skyward as she started down the first steps, remembering fondly how the sun always set so much later on Asgard than it did on earth and how she missed the brilliant hues the sun cast over the sky, bathing it in fiery oranges and decadent pinks. A deep sigh lifted her chest before it dropped as her eyes did the same. She often thought about Asgard; the way the breeze tasted on her tongue and the way her chambers smelled when she had found lilies to put on the table, and of course she missed him.

Her father had visited a few months ago and regaled Felicity with tales of skirmishes in Jotunheim and how Thor had driven back the giants. She had always known he had greatness in him; stubbornness, rashness and probably a little youthful arrogance, but all that aside, Felicity knew he would make a wonderful King.

She could only imagine what he must looked like; likely taller than her by more than she cared to admit with shoulders that grazed the doorframes he walked through. He probably kept his hair long and she imagined his eyes were the same vivid blue they had been in childhood.

She shook the thoughts from her head as Cisco offered her a ride home which she gingerly accepted; the subway at this time of the evening was a pulsing dungeon of body odour and misery that she wished to avoid.

“Felicity!” she heard her name and her eyes tweaked around her surroundings looking for its origins, but all she saw were people with their heads down walking the gauntlet that was the public sidewalk.  
“Felicity?!” she heard it a second time and her head swivelled back towards the building she’d just left.

Then she saw him, looking like a relic from the Sci-Fi museum.  
_Oh, no, that couldn’t be?_  
“Flick!”  
His large hands waved at her as she stood frozen and in utter, complete, disbelief. It was him.  
_Oh shit._

The next thing she knew, Felicity was in the air with her legs dangling like limp sausages as her pumps threated to fall from her feet – that would likely teach her for buying a size too big just because they were on sale – as she had the breath squeezed out from her lungs.

When Thor finally put her down again, she took a few moments to fill her lungs back up as she shimmied her skirt back down her legs.  
Cisco looked panicked as he reached into his knapsack. “I have pepper spray man,” he threatened with shaking words and a line of perspiration across his brow.  
“It’s fine,” Felicity talked him down calmly, before she told the first of what would be many a fabrication, “he’s my cousin.”

It was somewhat of a ludicrous lie, the tiny bottle-blonde Jewish woman and the strapping hulk of a Nordic God didn’t exactly _look_ like cousins, and in hindsight saying he was an “old friend” might have been more believable, but Felicity was thinking on her feet – after seeing a ghost of a life she’d once left behind.

“Cool costume man, are you like a wrestler?” Cisco asked as his eyes traversed everything from the silver breastplate to the flowing red cloak.  
Thor looked from one wrist brace to the other. “This isn’t a costume,” he laughed as he slapped Cisco’s shoulder in jest; but enough to move the much smaller man three paces to the right.

“Of course it is,” Felicity chimed in loudly, before she tapered down the volume of her voice and continued, “because you work at Disneyland, that’s your costume for them, there, where you work,” she babbled, _lie upon lie,_ as she glared at Thor and her fingers gabbed fitfully at the air.  
Cisco seemed to buy it and for a moment Felicity wanted to question his common sense. “Oh cool, cool, who are you?”  
“A Star Wars person,” Felicity interjected, immediately regretting the decision given who she was talking to, but sticking with it all the same.  
The excitement radiated off Cisco like a sunbeam and he was, momentarily, rendered speechless. “Who? Is it a new exhibit? I heard there were rumours about…” he panted as he tried to catch his breath.  
_Should have gone for something more obscure,_ Felicity lamented to herself.  
Thor, for his part, looked utterly bemused, but Felicity wasn’t going to give him a chance to speak if she could help it.  
“It’s some new character,” she offered flippantly, despite her chest clenching with each word.  
“Is it from the extended universe? A Sith or a Jedi? Or neither, because that looks a little imperial.”  
Thor went to open his mouth before Felicity surreptitiously kicked his shin.  
“Both,” she announced.  
Cisco’s eyes lit up like the 4th of July. “Wait, there are only a handful of people it could be and I’m just…” he lifted his hands to his head and blew them out like an explosion.  
“Well he really shouldn’t talk about it anymore, it’s top secret,” she cringed as her fellow IT consort fanboyed over what he took for an actor immersed in a fantasy role.  
“You’re right,” Cisco agreed as he gestured across his lips like a zip. “Sorry I didn’t catch your name?” he added.  
Thor stepped to the side of Felicity’s foot so she couldn’t kick him a second time, “Thor...”  
“Thormas,” Felicity interrupted as she smacked her hands together before she folded them into her armpits. “It’s Scandinavian for Thomas.”  
_Liar, liar pants on fire._

“I, that’s…” Cisco ruffled his hand through his floppy hair.  
“Very weird,” Felicity nodded sharply, “His parents are super weird, but you can just call him Thomas, Americanise it.”  
“Ah okay, nice to meet you Thomas, are you staying?”  
Thor opened his mouth to answer, but Felicity got in there first once again, “No, nope, he’s not, got to get back to work tomorrow; but can you, just, excuse us?”  
Cisco nodded, slightly bewildered by the last few minutes. “You still want a ride home?”  
“Please,” she sighed as she turned the edges of her lips up into a smile, “I’ll just be 5 minutes.”  
“Okay, nice to meet you Thomas,” Cisco waved as he made his way down the last few steps alone.

“What are you doing here?” Felicity seethed as she grabbed his bulging arm and dragged him to the side. It didn’t go unnoticed that her fingers couldn’t even wrap halfway around his indecently large arm muscle and for a moment the only thought on Felicity’s brain was what the hell his breakfast must look like.

He smiled at her furrowed brow, that was his Felicity, the pout, the folded arms, the foot verging on tapping, she was just as he remembered her in so many ways; and yet so incredibly different in others; other ways he forced himself not to notice.  
_Her full, supple lips coloured a soft, dusk-rose._  
_Her rounded breasts behind a bodice of tight purple._  
_Her shapely waist, curved hips, full ass..._  
He bit the inside of his lip sharply, that was his little Felicity.

He reached his hand out and gently tugged the tip of her sleek ponytail. “This is pretty, I almost didn’t recognise you.”  
Reactively she slapped his hand away. “What are you doing here?”  
He rolled his shoulders stiffly. “I came to visit,” he answered gruffly.  
“The Prince of Asgard doesn’t just come to visit,” she argued in a whisper.

He ignored her question as his eyes walked up the tower behind them. “What is this place?”  
She glanced over her shoulder as she answered, “My work.”  
“You own the building?” His eyes widened and a proud smile lifted his lips before Felicity started laughing hysterically.  
“No, I just work in it,” she managed to say between fits of laughter.  
His smile dropped as he got the distinct impression she was laughing at him. “Which floor is yours then?”  
She shook her head absently; how could she expect the Prince of an entire realm to understand that she merely inhabited a small cubical on the 13th floor?  
“Look,” she sighed, the laughter abated, “is my father alright?”  
Thor’s lips furrowed. “He’s grumpy as he always is, but fine.”  
It had been about six months since his last visit as she had warned her father about taking the journey too often, fearing that it might be too much for him.  
“Thor why are you here?” she asked a second time before she expelled a faint sigh.

His weight shifted from one foot to the other and then back again as his folded arms twitched at the bicep. “Apparently I’m not fit to sit on the throne,” he said with a bitter sneer that mocked a few of the final words his father had spoken to him.  
“Oh,” Felicity popped her lips around the word as she relaxed her stance. The idea of the father and son butting heads was neither new nor a surprise.  
“I need to learn a few things about leadership and being worthy,” he continued, a slight roll in his eyes.  
“So you came to earth?” she quizzed curiously.  
“I figured you might be the one to tell me the truth, you’re always pretty smart.”  
He offered her a smile and a shrug from one of his gargantuan shoulders.  
“Come on then,” she breathed, “we’re getting a lot of really weird looks standing out here.”  
She started down the stairs and Thor followed. “Where are we going?”  
“You can come home, vent, eat takeout food then leave in the morning, deal?”  
She extended her hand for him to shake but he simply looked down at it and laughed before sweeping her into another embrace. “Deal.”  
She patted herself down after her feet were back on the ground. “One night,” she warned before she looked around, “Aren’t you missing something?”  
He looked back towards the dumpster where he’d left Mjölnir. He raised his hand to call it before Felicity slapped it down.  
“Go over there and pick it up,” she growled behind clenched teeth before he offered a sheepish smile and did exactly what he’d been told.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

  
“Thanks for the lift Cisco,” Felicity sighed as she closed the door on the little Corolla.  
The street lamps flickered to life as evening fell. “No problem,” Cisco replied while he jimmied the key in the car door to make it lock.  
“You live here?” Thor remarked as he stood staring up at the stark brick façade of her apartment complex.  
It wasn’t a hovel and despite the distant sound of sirens, it was a pretty decent neighbourhood. It was non-descript and the rent was reasonable. Felicity had come to earth to blend in and everything from her job to her apartment allowed her to do just that; which for the time being suited her perfectly.  
“Yes,” she chuckled as she pushed him towards the entrance.  
He trudged along behind her, his eyes roving from the cracked sidewalk to the bland exterior. “But it’s a dump,” he bemoaned as the three of them walked into the foyer.  
“Hey, I live here too,” Cisco pouted as he opened his mailbox and emptied the contents into his satchel.

Thor stopped and looked at Cisco with an amused and uneven smile.  
“Is this your boyfriend?” he teased Felicity who was also collecting her mail. “He has very skinny arms,” he continued as he lifted Cisco’s arm, dropping one like a puppeteer.  
“Put his arms down,” Felicity rebuked and Thor relented before the three started up the single flight of stairs.  
“Sorry my cousin is a little uncouth he comes from Wisconsin,” Felicity apologised as they reached the first floor landing. “Thank you for the ride home.”  
Cisco rubbed his wrists where Thor had raised them, as if they were weightless and puny, before he unlocked the door to one side of the landing and smiled back at his friend. “See you tomorrow?”  
Felicity nodded as she unlocked the door across from his. “Great thanks.”

When Cisco’s door was closed, Felicity pushed her new houseguest inside her studio apartment and kicked the door closed behind them.  
“What was that?” she snipped as she dropped her keys into a ceramic bowl beside the door. “You can't go around touching people’s arms!”  
“This is so small,” he remarked as he strode almost entirely around the studio in less than 20 paces.  
“There is only me,” she retorted as she shrugged off her jacket and hung it beside the door.  
It wasn’t _tiny_ , at least she didn’t think so. It had enough room for a queen-sized bed, a 2 seater couch, her desk, a TV and a little kitchenette that had little more than a chopping-board-size counter and the smallest stove known to man, but it was enough for her.  
“But you’re a genius?”  
He seemed genuinely perplexed and if she thought hard enough about it, her entire apartment would have fitted comfortable in just her bedroom in Asgard.  
“That doesn’t mean all that much here. People don’t just hand you things, well not me at least.”

She toed off her shoes and walked them to cabinet of shoes that doubled as nightstand while Thor’s attention diverted to a few photos hung on the wall. The jet black hair might have fooled other people, but he knew that smile anywhere.  
“Your Aunt?” he questioned as he pointed towards a photo of teenage Felicity with vivacious blonde woman.  
Felicity nodded as she shimmed her stockings down her legs without considering the fact she wasn’t alone in the room. “Donna Smoak,” she remarked as she sat down on the quilt at the end of her bed. “That was my mother's name and it’s mine now. We told people she was my mother to stop a lot of questions. She’s done a lot for me.”  
“You changed your name?” his head pricked towards her.  
“I had to,” she shrugged, “Kuttlerdottir would have made people ask a lot of questions on Earth.”  
“Midgard,” he corrected.  
“It’s earth to me.”

“You never came back,” he said sadly, his hands wringing each other.  
She swallowed heavily. “I couldn’t, the rules were pretty clear.”  
“I would have let you in,” he answered back without pause and she knew it was true.  
“You would have gotten into more trouble and I wasn’t worth it,” she spoke softly as she padded around to one of the kitchen drawers where she kept every delivery menu in a 5 mile radius.

He looked at her a little perplexed by her answer and she sighed, realising there was something about her departure she should finally tell him. “I heard your father reprimanding you after I broke my ankle.” She couldn’t look him in the eye for longer than two seconds before she dropped her attention to the flyers in front of her.  
She felt him walk closer, his presence almost surrounding her. “That was why you left?” he asked softly.  
She finally looked up; his body was like an eclipse of the fine threads of early evening sun that usually trickled in through her windows. “He was right in what he said,” she replied.  
“He was a cantankerous fool, he still is,” Thor remarked crisply.  
“All the same,” she bit back as she selected Chinese from the pile.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“What’s this?” he asked before he took another mouthful of takeout food as he sat on the wooden floor in front on the couch. His long legs were spread out under the coffee table, the limbs taking up most of the room, as Felicity sat behind him on the couch in yoga pants and an oversized tank. “It’s delicious,” he added as he chewed.

“Chow Mein,” Felicity remarked as she balanced her container on her bent knees.  
“And these?” he quizzed as he lifted a bag of fortune cookies into the air.  
“Break one in half and it will tell you your fortune,” she coached as she poked her big toe into his shoulder.  
He cracked one open over the coffee table and unravelled the small note inside, reading it aloud, “You are not the person the world expects you to be and that is okay.”  
“Poignant,” she noted softly.

He folded up the note without any comment and left it on the edge of the table before he leaned back and looked up towards her. “Are you happy here?” he asked warmly.  
She nodded her head gently. “For the most part.”  
His shoulders turned a little more towards her as his large fingers absently plucked along the edge of the fringed cushion behind him. “Do you ever miss home, Asgard?”  
“Sometimes,” she answered quietly as her shoulders dropped with a sigh. “I miss the way it smelled, those purple lilies that grew along the streams,” she reminisced as her eyes looked off into the distance, her mind searching out the last remnants of memories she held onto dearly, and fiercely. “I miss the colour of the cherry blossom trees too,” a longing sigh left off her lips, “they’re not quite as beautiful here.”

The room fell into a peaceful lull before Felicity spoke up again, “How did you find me?” she enquired.  
He shifted on the wooden floor as his eyes tacked out towards the night sky, littered with a few orange pops of light from the streets. “It wasn’t easy,” he answered as he folded his hands onto his lap. “I’ve spent years asking your father.”  
Felicity felt a pang of guilt in her belly. “I made him swear not to tell. I just thought it would be easier that way,” she admitted.  
_Easy to run away._  
He looked over his shoulder and smiled, instantly calming the turbulent guilt she was feeling. _He understood._ “Your father was very loyal to that promise. The last time he visited you, I snuck a totem into his luggage and while he was here I made Heimdall search for it,” he confessed with a guilty smile of his own.

“Did he know what you asked of him?” Felicity rebuked as she slapped his arm.  
He rubbed the spot in jest, as though her feeble attempt had actually hurt. “If he did, he said nothing of it,” Thor grinned, mischief glistening in his eyes. “He found you here.”  
A thought soon occurred to Felicity and she expressed it aloud, “My father visited nearly six months ago?”  
“I know,” he looked down to study the wrist guards he still wore, “I wanted to come straight after he returned.”  
“But you didn’t,” she spoke softly.  
She watched as his face softened, a rare moment where he didn’t seem quite so sure of himself. All the bravado aside; this was the boy she knew; the one she’d always known.  
“I wasn’t sure you would want to see me,” he paused to offer her a weak smile and a half-hearted shrug, “your father spoke about how well you were doing. Plus I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”  
“Oh yes,” she teased, rolling her head forward as her loose ponytail flopped over her shoulder, “because I happen to know a few other Nordic gods built like tanks with blonde locks and stupidly blue eyes, I might have mistaken you for one of them.”  
“You think I’m built like a tank?” he asked with a smirk.  
She rolled her eyes as her toes kicked out at his shoulder. “Your muscles have muscles,” she remarked before she took another sip of red wine.  
He flexed his arm in response and a colossal bicep mountain rose up under his taut skin. “What, this?” he kidded.  
Felicity rested her wine glass back on the table before her eyes ambled in a dramatic eye roll. “Show off,” she ribbed as her foot smacked his shoulder a second time.  
“Kick me again,” he warned, a toothy grin brightening his face.  
She pursed her lips and rocked her head back and forth. “And you’ll what?”  
“Are you still ticklish?”  
“No,” she answered with a cagey smile as she tucked her feet under her bottom.  
“You are,”  
“I’m not.” She smirked again just as her foot pounced out from under her and caught him in the ribs.

He moved faster than she would have thought his size allowed for and the next minute she was in a fit of laughter being lifted into the air; to the point she could probably dust her own ceiling if she wanted to. The laughing turned almost hysterical as her laughter gave way to streams of jovial tears when he dropped her onto the bed.

He caught her foot in one hand and started to tickle the inside arch as Felicity twisted and writhed in choked laughter until her other foot jerked out and landed a kick to his gut. He exaggerated falling backwards, as he had when they were only children, dragging her off the bed with him.

She fell onto him guffawing as she struggled to catch her breath. He stopped laughing first, with his hands at her svelte waist and his breathing gently lifting her. When she stopped laughing their eyes fell together and lingered silence enveloped them both.

His hands were warm where they touched a slither of skin where her singlet rode up. His eyes were softly hooded and a dazzlingly-brilliant blue that caught the reflections of the lights above them. Her lips were full and parted in the centre, bowed out like a tiny O-shape. Her hair fell forward over her shoulder with the ends tickling his neck.

He watched as her eyes slinked away as she swallowed heavily and in that moment he may have held onto her just a little tighter; until she moved.

“I should…” she paused, feeling the slight pinch of his fingers in her back, “…um I’m tired.”  
She shifted and his hands fell away from her as if on cue. “Maybe we can talk more tomorrow,” she added as she got to her feet and straightened her skewered top.

He said nothing, but did offer her a pleasant smile, as he lifted himself off the floor. Felicity busied herself getting him a blanket and the extra pillow from her bed. She walked them over to the small settee and placed them carefully at one end.  
“I hope this is…” she started as she gathered the empty dinner containers.  
“It’s perfect, thank you,” he kindly interjected.

She placed the trash in the bin and the glasses in the sink before she wordlessly excused herself to the bathroom, leaving Thor to finally let go of the breath he had been holding.

He had always loved her in one form or another, but what he was feeling right now in the thump of his heart and the dryness of his throat was something quite… _unexpected_.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Felicity stared at herself in the bathroom vanity with the toothpaste starting to droop off her toothbrush. The niggling urge to giggle and blush and recount all the ways her childhood crush was wonderful was beginning to make her feel 12 again; until she furrowed her brow and silently rebuked the ingenuous voice in her head.

She brushed her teeth and washed her face without allowing herself to think about it anymore; and when she slunk out of the bathroom she found him lying down on the couch that he was far too big for, reading a fashion magazine that he looked utterly bewildered by.

Felicity had also changed in the bathroom into her pyjamas, being a baby-pink satin camisole and a pair of matching shorts; an outfit that now seemed ludicrously feminine and in which she felt far too silly to let him see. She hugged a fluffy robe tightly around her body as Thor looked up from the makeshift bed that had his feet dangling over the edge of it and smiled as he closed the magazine and put it back on the coffee table.

“Goodnight,” she spoke softly as she walked on her tiptoes to the curtain that separated her ‘bedroom’ from the rest of the unit.  
“It was nice to see you again, after all this time,” he offered warmly, with a smile that matched.  
“It was,” she replied, her voice equally as soft and warm before she pulled the draping, black curtain closed.

Thor let his eyes adjust to the dim room as he settled into the small couch and let his eyes drift half closed. The curtain that separated them wasn’t sheer but with the illumination of her bedside lamp beside it he could see a smoky outline as she pulled back the covers of her bed.

Felicity glanced back towards the curtain and squinted her eyes to see some shapes or form behind it, but it didn’t give up any of its secrets and her chest relaxed with a silent sigh as she shrugged the robe from her shoulders.

The light and shadows caught her body perfectly and he found his eyes utterly engrossed with the sight. If it wasn’t for the slight flounce of lace around her torso and the legs of the shorts he might have thought her naked, but all the same the light hid none of her curves.

The little and brilliant Felicity he’d once known had grown up.

His eyes focused on the curtain that separated as he let go of a silent sigh; it felt like an impenetrable brick wall between them and he couldn’t quite understand why that made him so desperately miserable.

She settled into bed and carefully arranged the blankets around her chest before she reached for her lamp.  
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of your boyfriend earlier,” Thor spoke through the darkened room.  
“Who Cisco?” Felicity chortled. “He’s not my boyfriend, a work colleague and a neighbour, nothing more.”  
“Oh,” he remarked, his silence afterwards fished for clarification on one point.  
It came a few moments later.  
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Felicity added before she switched off her lamp and the apartment was blanketed in darkness.  
He smiled at himself for reasons he wasn’t prepared to admit.  
“Goodnight Felicity.”  
“Goodnight Thor.”


	2. Félagi | Friend |

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nordic for Friend.
> 
> Just a short one today, but it's cute (hopefully) ❤

 

  
Thor woke up the next morning with a strange and unfamiliar pain in his neck that resonated down his spine and out into his limp limbs as the morning sun assault his eyes. He groaned loudly at the intrusion until he heard a recognisable laugh that not even 9 years on Midgard had managed to change.

He opened one eye and found Felicity, dressed in a form-fitting black skirt and a billowing ivory blouse with faint black dots, standing over him with a smile lifting her cherry lips.

“Morning sleepyhead,” she remarked.  
He groaned a second time as he lumbered to sit up and struggled to make any one of his limbs respond to him.  
“Why am I in pain?” he lamented before he finally managed to haul himself into a sitting position.  
“If you paid attention in at least half of the classes you went to, you would know that earth takes Asgardians some getting used to,” she teased as his eyes blinked like heavy weights were attached to them.  
“Also your couch is very small,” he mumbled as he stood up.  
The blanket he had covering him dropped to the floor and Felicity found herself pushing the backs of her knees against the coffee table for support as she was given a front row view to what nine years had done to her childhood friend.

His chest looked like the type of physique that romance novels were dedicated to; brawny with ribbons of sinewy flesh and pulsing veins at his biceps, forearms and wrists. The skin was taut and smooth and was every synonym for perfect male specimen that could have been thought up. She tried her hardest not to stare but her eyes had forgotten how to blink.

When they finally did, she found herself studying the slight trail of fine, blonde hair down between his insanely cut abs, to his loose-fitting breaches and the unmistakable tent pole happening in the crotch.

_Oh god._

He saw her eyes widen and he looked down to see why, when he saw what she had, he panicked.

“That’s not you,” he announced as he fumbled to grab a pillow to press into his crotch .  
“No, of course it’s not,” she laughed awkwardly and she looked around the ceiling of the room, afraid to let her eyes venture anywhere else.  
“Not that you can’t make guys… I just… um, this…”  
“No it’s fine, I get it, _please_ don’t try to explain it anymore.”  
She disappeared into the kitchen and pressed her back into the fridge before she expelled a breathy and mouthed ‘Oh my god.’

If she allowed herself a moment of reflection on the anatomy of it all, it made perfect sense. He was well over 6 foot with shoulders that crowded in through a doorframe and thighs the size of small children. He was a literal deity. _Of course_ his cock would resemble the forearm of a fully grown person.

Her legs pushed together instinctively as she gulped down the very idea of it, doing _that_.

She heard the toilet flush and Felicity busied herself in the kitchen, fastidiously opening and closing cupboards and drawers to make it seem like she hadn’t spent the last few minutes dissecting the genitalia of her house guest.

The same boy who found snakes hilarious and would make her read his literacy homework aloud by the light of a lamp and a sky full of stars on her childhood balcony.

As far as she ought to be concerned; Thor was a eunuch to her and she willed herself to never think on the topic of him and _s.e.x._ again.

“So what are we doing today?” he asked, now wearing a shirt and without the pillow pressed into his nether regions.  
Felicity could sense the awkwardness in his tone and while it was settling to know he too probably wanted the ground to form a sinkhole around his feet; she was glad that he at least had the sense to leave well enough alone and change the subject, _only_ …  
“We?” she laughed as she pushed the drawer closed, ending her charade of looking busy. “ _We_ aren’t doing anything, _I’m_ going to work and _you_ are teeing up a ride home with Heimdall. A Bifrost Uber,” she laughed to herself, Thor clearly not getting the joke.

“I could come to work with you,” he said as he straightened his shoulders and tweaked his neck, flinching at the slight pain that resonated down his spine as a result.  
“And do what exactly?” she enquired as she opened up the cupboard above her and fished out an empty travel mug. “Lift heavy boxes?”  
His lips quailed at her jibe before she sighed and offered him apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, it’s just not ‘take your Nordic God to work day’ today, so…” she watched his lips flex into a smile, “…stay here, hang out. I have a few things to do today but I’ll come back before dinner and then we can get you home, okay?”

His brow twitched at the same time as one of his shoulders shrugged. “I’m not going home,” he advised nonchalantly.  
She scoffed at his quip, assuming he was joking. “Yes you are.”  
He wasn’t joking.  
“No…” he straightened his back and puffed out his chest in a manner that reminded Felicity of a Tomato Frog of Madagascar who puffs itself up like a balloon to convince predators that he is too large to swallow, “…I’m not.”

Nature documentary aside; Felicity needed to go. “I can’t be late for work, so I’m going to go.” She dropped her travel mug into her purse and walked around the _Frog_. “I’ll see you tonight.”

|><|  
| |

Thor let his eyes drift around the suddenly quiet apartment in the few minutes after Felicity had left waving a coat and her handbag behind her. He wasn’t sure if he was to stand in that same spot, unaware the apartment belonged to his once dearest friend, whether he would recognise her in it or not.

The decorating was sparse and simple, only photographs hung on the wall unlike her room back on Asgard that was painted with the finest of murals. Bright pops of colour made him smile but none reminded him of the rich burgundies and the opulent gold tones of her previous life.

It was only when he moved around the room a little and he caught sight of the neatly arranged bookshelf, organised from right to left in order of height, that he saw fragments of the Felicity he knew.

Trying to focus his thoughts elsewhere, Thor scooped up the fashion magazine he’d been perusing the night before and idly flicked through it’s glossy pages. When it opened on a spread of menswear, he stopped and studied the advertorial closely before he scrutinised his own clothes.

They looked vastly different; he should rectify that.

When he stepped out of the apartment, Thor found an older woman, well into her later years of life with a voluminous head of curly salt and pepper hair and a warm mocha complexion. She was stooped a little with one hand gripping the railing of the landing; and a few shopping bags were at her feet.

“Excuse me, are you alright?” he asked almost crouching his massive body in half to make eye contact.  
She looked up and his size startled her eyes wide for a moment.  
“I’m fine dear, the elevator is out and I live on the second floor, so I’m just catching my breath,” she replied with a broad smile.  
“Perhaps I could help you with those?” he remarked as he nodded down to the bags at her feet.

He helped her up the stairs, walking at her pace with his arm providing her some stability next to the handrail. It would have been far quicker to lift her and carry her up the flight of stairs, but he remembered Felicity’s warning that he couldn’t just go around lifting people’s arms and he figured the same would apply in this scenario.

Outside her apartment she offered him another smile along with a little pat on his arm.  
“Thank you dear, you’re very chivalrous. Did you come out of Felicity’s apartment?”  
He nodded buoyantly. “Yes, Felicity Kut-, I mean Smoak. Do you know her?”  
Another small double pat on his arm. “She’s helped me out many times with these new gadgets my son is always sending me, such a sweet girl. I didn’t know she had a new fella, a nice strong one even.” That time her pat also consisted of a little squeeze of his bicep.  
“Oh, me?” he chuckled lightly at the inference, “No, we’re…cousins.”

She responded with a light shrug before she continued, “So where are you off to today?”  
“I thought I might pick Felicity some flowers, could you point me in the direction of a field of wild flowers?”  
“Oh well,” she thought for a minute with her finger to her lip, “there are the botanical gardens, but you’re aren’t supposed to pick those flowers and all the parks around here are probably full of weeds or are covered in dog pee. I think you should buy some from the florist.”  
“Right, money.” He was bemused by the idea of the importance this realm placed on what was, in essence, paper and scrap metal. He dipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers and smiled as his fingertips happened upon a few gold coins there. “How much would this be worth?” he asked pulling one out. It was about quarter the size of his palm, but weighed enough to be felt in it.  
The older woman closed his fingers up around the coin and guided his hand back into his pocket. “Now keep that in there, walk half a block and cross the road, there is a pawn shop there. You tell him Edna sent you and he’ll give you a good price.”  
“Thank you, that is most helpful.”  
He leaned down and scooped up her weathered hand, placing a very light kiss on the back of her knuckles.  
“Are you first cousins or second?” she swooned, her cheeks a warm glow of cherry red.  
“Would it make a difference?” he asked with a laugh.  
She gave him a wink before she answered, “You can still marry your first cousin.”

|><|  
| |

  
Felicity came home with a few wrinkles in her skirt, a little less gloss on her lips and an exhausted trudge in her walk. She had planned to be home about an hour before she'd actually wandered through the apartment door, but better late than never, she supposed.  
  
“Sorry I’m a little late,” she yawned as she dropped her keys on the table beside the door. It took her a few moments to notice there were fresh flowers in a vase there too; it was few more moments until Felicity discovered her childhood friend in the kitchen, perfectly julienning carrots.  
  
“Welcome home,” he beamed, waving with the large kitchen knife for a few seconds.  
“What.” Her mouth fell open, swinging from her jaw. “What are you doing?”  
“I’m making us a chicken salad for dinner, but if you'd like something else,” he offered as Felicity floated towards him.  
It was then when she noticed his clothes; a pair of indigo chinos and a slate grey Henley. He definitely wasn’t wearing the ‘costume’ from the night before. He looked like a GQ magazine spread.

“What are you wearing?” she quizzed, surprise still resonated in her voice.  
He walked around the kitchen island and stared down at his outfit. “I was told this was quite fashionable,” he remarked.

“What is going on here?”  
She didn’t know where to start; the flowers? The tidy apartment? The dinner? The new clothes...  
“Don’t worry, I got you something too.” He took a shoe box, tied up with a ribbon from the floor and handed it her. Before she had a chance to reconcile what was happening, her childish instincts had already opened the gift and she was looking down at a very pretty, very expensive, _very designer_ pair of black pumps with diamond accents. She was trembling at just how pretty they were.

“How did you afford these?” she stammered, they were worth at least two weeks' rent.  
“Well I met Edna,” he started, “she told me all the flowers were ruined by canine fluids and she sent me to Jose across the road, he says ‘hi’ by the way and wanted to know if you wanted to Netflix and Chill with him, whatever that is,” the words tumbled out without him pausing to take a breath, but Felicity needed the cliff note of the story and why she was clutching a beautiful pair of pumps.  
“Get to the part where you could buy designer shoes, please,” she huffed.  
“Right,” he obliged as his palms tapped the tops of his legs. “It turns out gold is worth a lot here on earth.”  
“You pawned Asgardian gold?” she gaped with lumbered blinks.  
“Sure, I had a few coins, my rings, a chain, the cuff under my braces.”  
She pressed her forefingers into her temples. “Oh my god, you…Thor those are relics.”  
“To who?” he scoffed, “Not me, I could get more in a blink.” He pulled out the hem of his sweater and grinned at the softness of the fine wool. “You should have taken a suitcase of gold here, you wouldn’t be living in this tiny apartment.”  
Felicity could feel her chest tightening with each word he spoke. _You can’t just pawn off centuries old celestial gold_. “You have to take all this stuff back and get your things back.”  
“Why? I don’t need them,” he callously shrugged. “I need one of those job things. Where do I find one?” he asked as he tucked the shorter lengths of his hair behind his ear.

“You’re not staying on Earth,” Felicity argued, her hand fisting at her side to stop herself slapping some sense in the handsome buffoon.  
“I am,” he shot back with a petulant smirk before a sigh soon mellowed his tone. “I’m tired of never been enough on Asgard. I’m tired of the expectations and the duties.” He raked his hands over his scalp, falling away at the crown.  
“You can’t stay on Earth,” Felicity emphasized.  
“You did.”  
“I’m not important Thor, you are.”  
“You were to me.” He watched as her eyes, laden with guilt, dropped to the floor. “I know why you left; to start a new life and it seems to have agreed with you,” he atoned, “I only wish I could have been a part of it.”  
She walked around the couch and over to her bed where she opened the drawer of her nightstand, collected something in her palms and walked it back to him. Unfolding her hands, Felicity revealed a clay snake a 10 year old Thor had made for her.  
“You were,” she breathed.

The silence between them was broken by a knock on the door, which Felicity, feeling Thor’s gaze for far longer than comfortable, hurried to open. It was Cisco, knotting his hands in the hem of his Batman tee.

“Sorry was I interrupting something?” the moppy-haired genius asked as the tension from the room leaked out into the hall.  
“No,” Felicity lied, “what’s up?”  
“I’m still working on that relay code but I’m hitting dead end after dead end. I’ve built the specs we discussed but I’m losing something in the code. I really need your help.” He paused to look over Felicity’s shoulder, “Hi Thomas.”  
Thor blinked mindlessly until he remembered. “Oh, that’s me right, Hi.”  
“So I was hooo-ping,” he cocked his head to the side like a sad puppy, “you might be able to give me a hand? I’ll order extra pizza and coffee.”  
Felicity could do with a distraction. “Okay, you had me at pizza.”  
“Thomas can come,” Cisco added.  
Thor also jumped at the opportunity, “I’ll bring my salad.”

On the walk over there, with Cisco out of ears’ reach, Felicity stopped Thor and her shoulders fell heavy with a sigh.  
“Just, don’t say anything when you get in there,” she pleaded vaguely.  
“What do you mean?” he queried, bemused.  
Felicity combed her fingers through the lengths of her hair and sighed a second time. “You’ll see what I mean, just, don’t okay, please?”  
“Okay.”

He saw what Felicity meant the instant he walked into Cisco's apartment, which was a slightly larger version of Felicity’s with its own bedroom. On the wall was a large corkboard filled with theories on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, linked with threads of twine and dispersed with handwritten post-it notes.

There was another notice board where Cisco had laid out seven realms in a circle. Thor looked at Felicity with a gaped mouth but she shook her head fiercely as Cisco, with his back turned, walked into the kitchen, idly talking; although no one was listening.

“This is...” Thor started as he eyes tracked around the screeds of information.  
“Not a word,” Felicity growled between her teeth.  
Cisco walked out from the kitchen and collected his wallet off the edge of his desk. “Pizza is here, I’ll be back in a minute.”

The moment the door closed, Thor started. “He’s wrong.”  
“I know,” Felicity lamented.  
“So why haven’t you told him?”  
“I’m trying to be normal you know,” she scoffed as he walked closer to the board to study it.  
“But I thought he was your friend,” he mumbled.  
“He is, but the only person on earth that knows where I actually come from is Donna, and I suppose, technically you.”  
“But there are 9 realms.”  
“I know, I went to the same school you did,” she said with a smirk.  
“He’s missing Svartalfheim and Muspelheim,” Thor bemoaned. “And it’s not in a circle like this.” His eye was soon drawn to a copy of a painting of a statuesque figure with bulging muscles and a shock of red hair and matching auburn beard, with a pouted face, full lips and ruddy cheeks, coming out through a puff of clouds. “Who’s this?”  
Felicity cringed. “You don’t want to know, just promise me you wont say anything.”  
“Fine, but he’s wrong,” Thor mumbled.

“Looking at my board? It's fascinating right?” Cisco grinned as he walked in holding two large pizzas and kicked the door closed behind him.  
“Fascinating,” Thor hummed before Felicity elbowed him, unbeknownst to Cisco who had his back turned while he cleared a space on the bench for the pizzas.  
“Felicity thinks it’s all rubbish,” Cisco began, “This idea that other worlds have this connection, she thinks I’m wasting my time.”  
Thor folded his arms and smirked down at Felicity. “Oh she does, does she? As a kid she believed in things like that.”

“Did you two grow up together?” Cisco mused as he flipped the pizza boxes open.  
“Yes,” Thor answered for them both.  
Cisco turned to Felicity, “I didn’t know you lived in Wisconsin.”  
Felicity chewed precious seconds away nibbling on her lip as she tried to remember every conversation they’d had about her childhood, vague though she kept them. “I didn’t, uh Thomas lived in Vegas,” she answered.  
“Oh cool,” Cisco replied.

“Who is this?” Thor asked bluntly as he pointed to the photo of the painting.  
“That’s Thor, the Nordic God of Thunder, he's central to...”  
Thor roared with laughter. “No it’s not!”  
“Well it’s an artist’s rendition of course.”  
“But the hair and the beard that looks nothing like...”  
“I’m hungry!” Felicity announced. “Can I have a plate, please?”  
Cisco looked at her oddly from the outburst, but trudged into the kitchen regardless.

“Shut up,” Felicity warned, with narrow lips and focused eyes.  
“Felicity, that’s supposed to be me,” Thor sulked.  
“Shut up.”  
“But.”  
“Shut up. I swear if you say anything I will shave your head in your sleep, understood?”  
“Fine, understood,” he answered, trying to disguise the smile that was plucking the corner of his lips. “This is bullshit though, I don’t have red hair,” he added for good measure.


	3. Frœði | History

 

“Have you ever wanted to tell him the truth?” Thor asked after the pair had finally wandered back across the hall.  
Felicity ferried him inside the apartment with a yawn; it was nearing midnight. She waited until she closed the two of them in the small studio before she answered. “All the time,” she sighed while she ruffled a hand through her loose ponytail. “But I can’t.”  
“Why not?” he asked, the depths of his voice like an operatic baritone.  
“I’m just trying to exist,” she sighed as she rolled her head to loosen up her neck. “I’m not here to change the whole foundation of what people know or believe in.”

His brow furrowed as though he wasn’t fully stemmed by her answer, but the drawn look on her face begged him to leave it alone; she was tired, it was late and she’d sat in front of a computer far longer than her stiff bones would have liked.

“I’ll take the couch tonight,” she yawned as she clambered over the back of it and slumped into its cushiony embrace. “You’ll almost a whole extra person too long for it.”  
Her nimble fingers reached to her neck and gently pressed in on the ache that was beginning to make her eyes throb.  
“Not a chance in Muspelheim,” he retorted as his fingers instinctively curtained her hair over one shoulder.

Felicity flinched, surprised at first, as the heels of his hands pressed against her shoulders and his thumbs began to massage her neck in small, centred circles. His fingers felt warm and surprisingly gentle and when he found the spot the ache originated from, Felicity eyes slumbered closed and she sighed, hot and sticky.

He kept massaging her neck, bending his frame nearly in half to reach down. It had been somewhat instinctive to touch her, she was sore and he simply wanted to help, but when instinct soon gave way to the realisation that his fingers were also now gently stroking and rubbing the soft slope of her neck and making her mewl softly, Thor recounted feelings he’d long since vaulted.

His lips trembled with words he wanted to say, they were the words of a boy with a crush on his best friend and no reason to believe it was requited.

“Mmmmm,” she sighed, unwittingly loud enough for him to hear.  
The lucid moan that dripped from her lips made him pull back, afraid of the desire he had to lean down and kiss where his fingers had made her skin a light, glowing pink, flush with blood massaged to the surface.

He thought about how her lithe arms would feel around his neck, how easily he could carry her to the bed, lay her down and do anything she asked of him. Whatever whim she fancied, whatever desire she craved, whatever…

“I’ll take the couch, and only for a few more days,” he interrupted his own thoughts before they became so vivid she might be able to read them on his face.  
Felicity turned to look at him as he backed away from the couch. “And then you’ll return to Asgard?”  
“No,” he answered softly. “I’m not going back, my father will carry on his rule and my brother after him for all I care,” he added with flecks of bitterness tainting his words.  
“You don’t mean that,” she sighed, dropping her head towards one shoulder and peering up at him with the large saucer-shaped eyes he remembered her using to her advantage from their youth.  
But he wouldn’t be swayed by them over this, _or at least he’d try really hard not to be._ He banded his arms across his broad chest, posthumously puffing it out. “I do.”  
Her nude lips turned up into the knowing smile that finally seemed to suit her age. “I don’t understand what happened between you and your father.”  
“He called me bull-headed and brutish, stubborn and foolish, that I never considered the consequences of my actions,” Thor prattled, scoffing after each remark.

Felicity shrugged.  
“Those all sound like the boy I knew.”  
“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” he lamented sarcastically.  
“But,” she emphasised, “you’re also kind and loyal and strong.” She stood off the couch and walked on the balls of her feet towards him, absently swaying her hips as she moved. “A good leader, a _fine_ king, isn’t born that way Thor,” she continued, standing a few feet from him, his large frame eclipsing her, “they grow and shape themselves to what their kingdom needs. What makes a worthy king is the willingness to be whatever his people need him to be, to fight for them or to mourn with them. To feel pity and to show kindness, to sacrifice and to walk among them. You might be a warrior,” she smiled, touching the tips of her fingers to his forearm and trickling them down the twisted veins that wove to his wrist, “but you also have the fortitude to be a king and a damn good one at that.”

He sighed at her feather-like touch, enjoying it in silence for a few moments.  
“You think I should go back.” It wasn’t a question, but his eyes still begged for her thoughts.  
“I think you should find whatever you thought it was you could find here and then return to the place you belong. Midgard has a lot things to learn from, good _and_ bad.”  
She smiled warmly and her fingers stayed near his wrist.  
“And what if this takes weeks?”  
She looked over her shoulder at the small couch and laughed. “Then, I guess I’ll need to get a bigger couch.” When she looked back at him, the laughter had faded but her smile hadn’t. “But until then, the bed is big enough for us both,” she said while she nodded her chin towards the queen-sized bed.

Her fingers dropped away from him before she padded over towards the bed and stood, transfixed, at the foot of it and for reasons known only to her; avoided his eye contact.  
“We’ve done it before when we were children and I don’t suppose all that much has changed since then.”

She couldn’t have said ‘ _we’re just friends after all_ ’ any louder, or at least that’s what he heard.  
“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she added, glancing his way for just a second. “We’ll talk more tomorrow?”  
She floated over to the couch where she collected his pillow and carried it back to him. “I sleep on the left,” she mused as she pressed the pillow into his chest before she disappeared into the bathroom.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

When Felicity came out of the bathroom, he was under the covers and facing away from her. She stood, poised in the doorway, trying to settle her feverish breath as her eyes traversed the work of art that was his back.

He looked carved from marble, sculptured perfectly to be fawned over with eager hands; hands like the ones that were trembling at her sides. There were ripples of muscles she had never even considered were possible, like a mountain range of delectable flesh to ply between ones fingers – or better yet, one’s _mouth_.

His shoulders were like boulders set on top of larger boulders and surrounded by an entire quarry of boulders and Felicity found herself gnawing away at the inside of hers cheeks and quite nearly salivating out of the corners of her lips like a teething infant.

It was pretty safe to say, she had never seen anything quite like Thor Odinson’s back.

She felt a shiver down her spine and a tingling sensation between her legs before she realised she was making herself excited at the very idea of how parts of his body might feel against _parts_ of her body and, disgusted with herself for dissecting him like a piece of sexual meat, Felicity shook off the lewd thoughts as best she could and scrambled into bed, denying herself an up close look and that ‘Candyland of brawn’.

Rigidly she kept her eyes focused on the ceiling as she tugged the blankets up to her chin. The lamp was still set to dim beside her but she wasn’t prepared to move to turn it off just yet. Disobediently, her eyes wandered to the other side of the bed, to where the sights that awaited them had her feeling hot shivers down her body and scolding desire between her legs.

He was as far away from her as he could possibly make himself and she assumed, given he hadn’t said a word since she’d opened the bathroom door, that he’d fallen asleep that way – making sure she didn’t get the ‘wrong impression’.

Friends slept with a cavern of space between them.

Because they were friends; or at least they were at _some_ point. She really wasn’t sure what they were anymore, but ‘lovers’ they definitely weren’t. That’s why he had put a crater between them.

Felicity couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried.

His fingers still tingled from touching her and his stomach was tied and twisted around his thoughts and feelings. How could it be that, even after years, a few moments spent with her and he had been transported to the puckish child with wild blonde hair madly in love with his quiet best friend with almond shaped eyes and a perfectly pinched cupid’s bow? He had even asked Sabine what sort of gift a girl might like, given he knew snakes were out of the question and he wanted it to be perfect. But then she fell and hurt herself and all he felt was rage at the ones that had caused it to happen.

_And then she was gone._

Gone before he could ever declare he thought about her as more than just a friend. Gone before he could have taken her to the field of wild flowers she loved so much and admitted, like a smitten fool, that he’d like to hold her hand. Gone before he could ever divulge he had travelled in secret to each realm to steal her a book from them all.

He lumbered out a sigh when he thought about how he still had them, sitting unopened and gathering dust, some of their spines never cracked, waiting for her return; a return that never came.

 _A foolish crush_ , he reminded himself, _and one that would never be reciprocated_.

She could feel the bed moving every time he did. She had, of course, shared a bed with a man before, but he was so massive it made even the smallest movement feel like an earthquake centred in that, now seemingly tiny, bed.

Seeking familiar comfort from the mattress, Felicity turned onto her side and caught the shadows his body cast in the serene stillness. She would have taken the clap of a thunderstorm or the drum-like noise of rain pelting against the thin windowpane, but there was no such distraction and Felicity found herself listening to the long, drawn breaths he took, instinctively trying to mimic them in the near silence while his sheer mass generated a heat that she could feel despite the distance between them; _distance in more ways than one._

With the ambience of his breathing and the treble of her own shaky breath, Felicity found herself imagining kissing the threads of his sinewy shoulders, so vividly in fact that she could _almost_ taste the tanginess of skin misted with salty sweat.

She used to dream innocent dreams about a long white and gold dress that brushed the floor as she walked, spring time when the air was particularly fragrant, in a spot on Asgard where the birds sung at the cusp of a new day; there she would marry him, her prince who had somehow fallen in love with her despite all the reasons she knew he never would.

But now, her innocence somewhat displaced, she imagined herself above him, her skin glistened with perspiration, her voice thin, her breathing shallow, her body swollen with him. His eyes wild, his hands gripped her to waist, pleasure dripping in the way he said her name, her breasts aching, her chest heaving.

Thrusting…thrusting…Thrust…

“Goodnight Felicity.”  
She whimpered at the intrusion and her dreams dissipated into dust. He could never love her. He would never see her like that.

“Goodnight.”  
He held the word with a smile, trying to memorise the softness and the tone of her voice, it hadn’t changed all that much, and despite the distance, neither had his feelings for her. The attraction may now be packaged with more carnal thoughts, but at it’s heart, he was still 13, and still in love with his best friend.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
It smelled like fragrant flowers. He breathed in, holding it long enough to appreciate the notes on his senses as he let his mind tumble through lucid thoughts. Asgard was in bloom with blue, cloudless skies, where paradisiac beauty surrounded him as he sat, encompassed by the fragrant aroma of flowers, watching stones skip across the serene pond. Ripples from the waterfall had petered out and the sounds of bird songs made him sigh in contentment. Fingertips brushed the tips of the poppies growing like a cascading river down the sweeping hill. They felt like velvet under the pads of his fingers. His body was warm, bathed in the embrace of the sun. He was happy.

In that dream state he kissed the petals of a flower delicately, careful not to damage their fragile tips. They were warm and supple, almost pliant even and he found himself smiling dopily at the sensation of them.

As his mind slowly wandered into reality he found his arms around something, something warm, something soft, something… _breathing and mewling._

He plucked an eye open and visions of Asgard in bloom vanished, replaced with the muted walls of Felicity’s apartment. Blinking the morning into view, he soon realised the pleasant scent that teased his senses was _her_ , asleep with her back pressed against his chest, lying in his arms.

 _Shit_. His body quivered unexpectedly and the movement made Felicity wake from her own pleasant dreams of a warm summer evening with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as she watched the sun fall beyond the horizon.

Then she saw his hand, sitting around her waist, practically engulfing it, his thumb was under the tank top she wore, skin against skin, and his little finger sat just above her mound. So dangerously close that it made her quiver.

She touched his knuckles just to ensure they were real and he replied with a slightly rasped, “Good morning.”

Felicity lifted her body from the mattress and Thor retracted his slightly numb hand.  
“Sorry, I…” she started though she wasn’t sure what to apologise for first.  
“I think we both, just…” his words trailed off too.  
“Just … yeah,” she fumbled a hand through her loose locks and touched the part of her neck that, in her dreams, had felt kissed and caressed by that warm summery breeze.  
_Had he?_ It was a little damp to the touch, or maybe she was imagining it.  
“Did you, uh, want the bathroom first?” she asked, her eyes tripping down the bed to maybe catch sight of what she had been treated to the morning before.

Thor could feel the throbbing erection between his legs as he shook his head casually. He couldn’t move without putting himself on display, but she didn’t need to know that. “You go.”  
“Okay, thanks,” she breathed as she grabbed a collection of clothes – far more than she needed – and scrambled into the bathroom.

Only when the door was locked and with her hand fisted between her teeth did she let out a slow, aroused moan.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

With his manhood composed and Felicity dressed in a pair of sweatpants and tank top; her usual weekend attire, Thor watched her from the couch as she ferried around the kitchen making her morning cup of coffee.  
“This is delicious!” he effused from the couch as he downed his mug in almost a minute flat.  
“You’re supposed to sip it and savour it,” she laughed as she walked around the back of the couch.  
He set his empty mug on the table. “Could we talk?” he asked, his voice somewhat timid and unsure.  
With her coffee cup in hand and a lucid morning glaze over her eyes she padded around to where he sat and plunked herself on the couch beside him. “Of course.”

Their bodies touched, quite unintentionally, but neither could bring themselves to scuttle closer to the edge of that tiny couch. He felt suddenly aware of his hand and before he decided what to do with it, he’d already lowered it to her knee _and she hadn’t pulled away from it._

He was going to tell her. The words, albeit scattered and not altogether poetic, were on the very tip of his tongue. _He had loved her, as much as any young boy could, he was very sure he loved her still... did she? Could they?_  
He swallowed lumps of nervous air and fought every inclination to retract or retreat.

She was looking at him with wide, beautiful eyes; eyes that the years hadn’t changed, wise, curious eyes that always tempered his mischievous ones, eyes he wanted to lose himself in.

“What’s up?” she prodded, glancing down only momentarily at his hand that eclipsed almost her entire thigh and knee.  
She held herself taut, despite wanting to shudder at his touch. Her hands remained nailed to the sides of her cup as she fought back desires to trace his hand with a finger or, better yet, feel the throbbing muscle of his thigh _right next to her._

She gulped to stop herself from moaning.  
_They were just friends. She was no Lady Sabine after all._

His mouth opened, but no words came out.  
And before he could try again another sound filled the silence; a knock on the door.

She looked at him, eagerly awaiting his words but when a second knock came she set her coffee cup on the table and stood up. “Hold that thought.”

Felicity wandered over to the door and, expecting to find Cisco on the other side, she pulled the door wide open.

But it wasn't Cisco.  
_It was..._  
"Gavin?" she gasped like a whisper, and while it was sort of a question, she didn't need and answer, she knew him. _All too well._

She was frozen when he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Hi Felicity,” he cooed and she hated herself for not moving fast enough to slam the door in his Ken-like face.

Thor turned on the couch and stared down the stranger with chiselled cheekbones, a tuft of dark hair that sat in a perfect quaff on his head and his mouth absurdly close to Felicity's blushing cheek.

If looks could kill, when the two men linked eyes, Felicity would be cleaning up two bodies.

"You have company?" the dark haired man crowed as he instinctively stretched out his shoulders to appear larger. And perhaps the 6ft nought man with a quarterback-esque physique might have alpha-maled someone like Cisco or an average man, but he hadn't counted on the Nordic giant sitting in his ex girlfriend's apartment.

Thor smiled at the attempt before he stood up and made a mini spectacle out of his sheer size by jostling his shoulders and twitching his biceps.

“Oh, um, no,” Felicity reacted as she glanced over her shoulder, “that’s my cousin.”  
Thor's shoulders deflated almost immediately. He didn't know what he would have expected her to say but that didn't make the words any more palatable.

“I never met him,” Gavin remarked, keeping his thin, suspicious eyes trained on the brawny stranger.  
“A distant cousin,” Felicity lied effortlessly. “What are you doing here?”  
She finally stepped back to put a defined distance between them, an act which plucked Thor's lips into a smile at the edges.

“I didn't like where we left things,” the intruder sighed, pinging the cuffs of his navy sports coat.  
“How we left things?” Felicity scoffed. “You're the one that moved out of our old apartment three months ago while I was at work so please tell me how we left things.”  
“I'm sorry,” he breathed as Thor snarled behind Felicity. “That was a dick move but I got scared.”  
“Scared?” she laughed thank  I could just explain; if we could talk.”  
It went against her better judgment but she let him in and pointed him towards the couch which Thor had vacated.

It didn't go unnoticed by Gavin that both sides of the bed were still in disarray from the night before.  
“You have five minutes,” Felicity said coolly.  
Gavin brushed passed Thor who growled under his breath, something only heard by the two men.

“Is your cousin just going to stare at me?” Gavin quipped as he made himself comfortable on the couch.  
“It's a small apartment Gavin, what would you have him do? Wait in the hallway? You now have 4 minutes and 25 seconds,” Felicity rebutted, much to Thor’s amusement.  
He grinned and silently stamped his feet, anchoring them, but only for a fleeting moment before Felicity sighed, turned to him and spoke, "would you mind giving us a minute? Maybe take Cisco back his coat?” she asked as she nodded to the black hoodie hung on the back of the door.  
“Are you sure?” he asked, leaning in close to her ear. _He didn't trust this fool, why would she?_  
“Yeah, it's fine.”

Reluctantly Thor left and Felicity closed the door behind him.  
“I don't think your cousin likes me,” Gavin chuffed as Felicity perched on the far end of the couch.  
“He doesn't know you,” she remarked, _but even if he did..._  
“Is he a wrestler or something?”  
She glanced down at her wrist watch. “Four minutes. Or did you come to talk about my cousin?”  
“Okay, right. Felicity, _baby_ , I fucked up.”  
“Yeah. You did,” she sighed.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
With his face like thunder as he looked back at Felicity's apartment, Thor rapt on Cisco's door.  
“Thomas, gees, I thought you were the feds,” Cisco declared before he shovelled another spoonful of frosty flakes into his mouth.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thor huffed before he held out Cisco's jacket. “This is yours.”  
“Oh,” Cisco mumbled as he swallowed the last of his mouthful. He set his bowl down onto the table beside the door. “Thanks, where is Felic...”  
“Who’s Gavin?” Thor asked with a throbbing locked jaw.  
“Gavin?” Cisco growled as he stared out into middle-space and wrung the jacket between his fists.  
“That’s what I said,” Thor huffed, confusing the smaller man’s response for a correction.  
“I know,” Cisco nodded, “I was being ominous.” He threw the jacket behind him into his apartment and continued, “Gavin is Felicity’s ex-boyfriend, total tool. I said if I ever saw him around here again I’d beat his ass,” he announced as he gave the air a few short jabs with his fist.  
“Well he’s right across the hall on her couch so go ‘beat his ass’,” Thor encouraged with air quotes.  
“That’s a hyperbole,” Cisco rescinded, “the guy is like almost as large as you.”  
Thor scoffed out an amused laugh. “Not even by half.”  
“But she let him in?”  
“Should I be concerned?” the legend remarked as he looked back towards Felicity’s door.  
“The guy is a dickweed but she can handle him. I’m surprised she never told you about him they were together for a long time.”  
“How long?”  
“Two years.”  
Thor managed to stop himself from gasping, this _Gavin_ wasn’t a two-date ex, he was serious relationship; Felicity had been in at least one serious relationship . While the idea rattled him, it didn’t surprise him; she was kind, funny, brilliant and while he had always found her bright blue eyes and the dimples in her cheeks innocently adorable, she had also blossomed into a beautiful woman; _of course_ other men would have seen that and would have wanted to be in her orbit.

Maybe if he had found the courage to tell her how he felt all those years ago things might have turned out differently.

“Anyway, I should make some popcorn, because _Gavin_ ,” Cisco growled, “is going to come out of that door with his tail between his legs when she’s done with him.”  
“Popcorn?” Thor bemused, “it’s 9 in the morning and you haven’t finished whatever that coloured liquid is,” he said as he point down to the dissolving frosty flakes in rainbow milk.  
“It’s a figure of speech,” Cisco effused, “Don’t they have those where you grew up?”  
“There is a saying to have balls like a dragon,” Thor remarked.  
“One of these days I’m going to need to visit Wisconsin.”  
“What did this Gavin do anyway?”

Felicity’s door opened and Cisco slapped Thor’s arm excitedly. “Oh wait, here it comes, kind of wish I’d made actual popcorn,” he whispered.

Thor couldn’t hear the exchange of words between Gavin and Felicity as they stood at her door, but he absolutely didn’t miss the way the man leaned in and languidly kissed her cheek for the second time that morning. And she didn’t slap him.

“Oh, snap,” Cisco breathed.  
Gavin turned to the two men across the hall and smiled. “Hi Crisco,” he waved.  
“Cisco, he knows my name is Cisco, fucking asshole,” the smaller man replied under his breath and through clenched teeth pulled into a tight smile. “Hey,” he said mutedly as he lethargically waved back.

Thor followed him with narrow and wary eyes and only once the man had disappeared down the stairs, did he move from his spot and approach Felicity. She looked drawn and tired, and remnants of tears left her cheeks ruddy.  
“Is everything okay?” he asked, worry swamping his expression.  
“Sure, yeah.” She did her best to shake off his concern with a fleeting smile before she walked back into her apartment, Thor a few steps behind.  
“That was an ex?” he asked as he closed the door softly behind him.  
“Yep,” she popped as she hugged her arms around her waist and scuffed her feet on the floor; still with her back to him.  
“Are you getting back together?”  
He watched her shoulders slump and her head rock from side to side. “No,” she answered softly, but soon added, “I don’t think so, possibly, I don’t know.” She turned to face him with a pacifying smile on her lips. “It’s complicated.”  
“Is it?”

His words hung like an anvil in the air before she blew out an exacerbated sigh. “What did Cisco tell you about him?”  
“Not much,” Thor replied, leaving out the _dickweed_ and _total tool_ remarks seemed for the best. “Just that you had been together for a long time.”  
She nodded her head as she walked aimlessly around the apartment. “Nearly two and a half years,” she sighed. “So it’s complicated.”  
“Do you still love him?” Thor asked, immediately regretting the words; he didn’t want to know that, _did he?_  
Her face grimaced and her eyes pulled away from his, as though each word was like a painful jab at her ears. She had, of course, he had been over two years of her life, but how could she talk about it with the boy she first loved?  
“There are some things we need to talk about, that’s all,” she remarked as nonchalantly as she could with her stomach in knots.  
“You’re seeing him again?” Thor could feel his voice raising and he quickly wrestled it back down.  
“It’s complicated,” she argued, more with herself than Thor, before she slumped onto the couch and combed her fingers through her hair. “Anyway, there was something you wanted to talk about?” she sighed, hoping for a change in subject.

He could see she was emotionally exhausted, tangled up in thoughts and feelings that had drained her; and he couldn’t bring himself to add anything more to it.  
“I don’t even remember now,” he lied. “Finish your coffee before it gets cold.”  
“Mmhm,” she sighed as she glanced down at the tepid drink before her eyes floated out the window, looking at nothing at all really.  
  
“I think I need to… gym,” she remarked, picking herself up from the couch. There was far too much activity in her brain and running mindlessly on a treadmill with ballads sung by the likes of Whitney and Beyoncé playing at an almost-uncomfortable level through her earphones sounded pretty good right about then.  
“What’s a gym?” Thor asked and the crinkle of confusion across the bridge of his nose made Felicity smile.  
“It’s basically a sparring room with less things that could maim you,” Felicity replied, “you could always come,” she added; _the divas could wait._  
“Is gym a usual Midgard pastime?”  
She shrugged her shoulders, “A lot of people have every intention of making it a usual thing.”  
“And you would like me to accompany you?”  
“Sure.” She brushed her hand down his arm, “and when I inevitably overdo it on the treadmill and turn my legs into jelly, you can carry me home. Deal?”  
“Deal,” he smiled.


	4. Einn | Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi lovely crackshippers, this will be the last update of this story for 2018, so I hope you like it ❤

 

“What do people do here?” Thor asked as his curious eyes wandered around the gym.  
“Get fit,” Felicity chuckled as she slapped his arm with the back of her hand. “Not all of us were born with a six...” her eyes wandered down his chest as her tongue instinctively wet her lower lip, “...make that _eight_ pack.”  
“You look perfect, you always have,” he said and for a moment Felicity thought him taunting but his lips never cracked from his kind smile.

Before she could say anything Thor started to gather a crowd of admirers and within 10 minutes he was swarmed with men asking for pro tips and women mopping up saliva from the corners of their mouths until Felicity was squeezed out.

She should have seen it coming and honestly Felicity was kicking herself for not, as a stew of jealousy bubbled in the pit of her stomach; no matter how hard she tried to dispel it.

She shrunk back into a quiet corner, chose a machine by the window, put her head phones on and became one with the elliptical.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

In a full sweat and with her heart racing in her chest, Felicity was focused, crazy-eyed and driven. Running for an imagined goal until her stomach felt like it was bubbling up her throat she had almost managed to forget everything. _Almost_.

A tap on her shoulder startled her and Felicity lost her footing and stumbled backwards off the machine and straight into his waiting and able arms. Time slowed as she lay in his arms staring up at his face while Thor just gently smiled with a thread of hair fallen over one eye.

He started to talk and it took a few moments for Felicity to realise she still had the Prodigy blasting in her headphones – she had been feeling a little less _diva_ , a lot more _angry thrash metal from the 90s._

Thor set her down and she slid off her headphones. “Sorry, I didn’t hear,” Felicity puffed as she tried to catch her breath.  
“I have one of those job things,” he enthused with a wide-brimmed smile.  
“What?” she wheezed, her breathing still slightly erratic.  
“The man that owns this establishment told me he would pay me to show up, tell some people they were weak and they ought to try harder and lift weights without my shirt on.”  
In other words the owner wanted a 4D sinewy advertisement for his gym in the shape of a Nordic God. _Of course he did._

“Tonight we celebrate, even Cisco can come,” he announced gingerly, his face a glow.  
Felicity looked down at her sneakers as she scuffed the sole on the carpet. “I can’t tonight,” she mumbled, looking anywhere but at him.  
“Are you working?”  
She shook her head. “No, I um…” she took a few breaths as she tried her best to come up with something other than the truth.

But he could see it in her eyes.  
“You’re seeing Gavin?” he asked pointedly, his voice rose and there was little he could do to retract it.  
Her lips furrowed as her head cocked to one side.

“It’s not like that exactly,” she huffed while she patted the gym towel against her forehead. “I don’t expect you to understand you’ve never had someone you love just up and leave without any real explanation or chance for you to make things right, but I owe it to myself to see if this can be salvaged.” She could feel her frustrations biting at her tone but she didn't know if it was directed at him or herself. She shook her head and ran a track through her hair. She needed to leave. “I’m going to go shower, and you have a fan club,” she remarked as she backed away while she nodded to the groupies behind him.

He watched her leave before he blew out the words in his head atop a sigh.  
_Because he knew exactly what that felt like._

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

They barely talked on the way home and once they entered Felicity's apartment not much changed. Awkward silence ruled.

Felicity kept herself occupied with a few work-related tasks she had been putting off, robotically typing out codes and chewing on the end of a pen as she theorized simple programming she could ordinarily do in her sleep; while Thor flicked absently through TV shows as he mulled over everything in his head, that was until he couldn’t keep them from erupting out of his mouth a moment longer.

“So you and Gavin lived here?” he asked abruptly as he glared over his brawny shoulder at the bed that had become like an incarnation of evil.  
She was surprised by the gruffness in his voice, but glad for the break in the awkward silence that had fogged up between them. She plucked the pen from between her teeth and turned in the small office chair in the corner of her apartment before she hung one svelte arm over the back.

“No,” she answered with a sigh. “We had an apartment closer to town, a nice little two bedroom place but…” another wistful sigh, “…when he moved out I couldn’t afford it so Cisco helped me get this place.”

She tapped her fingers against the thick mesh at the back of her office chair before she shrugged softly. She had summed it up well enough, glossing over the absolute devastation she had felt. She didn't need him to see that part of her, nor did she care to remember it.

“He just moved out?” Thor asked, baffled. He couldn't imagine what kind of a raving idiot would walk away from someone so perfect.

It was embarrassing to talk about and Felicity found herself wanting to get defensive.  
"Yeah, I came home one day and his stuff was gone along with the couch and the bed," she shrugged ... _and then I lived in my pyjamas for two months while I wallowed in self pity and ate ice cream straight from the tub._

Thor smiled at the bed; maybe it wasn’t the enemy after all. But that smile was only fleeting as her words replayed in his mind and he heard the slight quiver in her voice that she had tried her best to hide. _Gavin had broken her heart and he wanted to break Gavin's nose._

“Why are you okay with someone treating you like that?” he asked tersely.  
“I’m not okay with it,” Felicity snipped back.  
A frustrated sigh echoed off the walls as he felt his chest puffing out. How did Felicity not see how amazing she was, how much better she deserved than a man who would just walk away from her? “Well you’re seeing him tonight so you must be.” He replied harshly and he saw her face wince.  
“It’s complicated, he had his reasons and he was sorry. People make mistakes,” she prattled, perhaps attempting to convince herself of the same.

“People don’t hurt the people they’re supposed to care about.”  
She wrapped her arms around her waist as she walked towards the window, turning her back on him. “That’s not fair,” she breathed, her eyes welling up and her throat tightening.  
“When did you become this person?” he asked, tempering his anger but all she heard was disappointment; and perhaps that was worse.  
“And what is that supposed to mean?” she spun around and asked sharply.  
“The Felicity I know wouldn’t let some guy treat her like this.”

“The Felicity you knew was a child,” Felicity snapped, “she saw the world in black and white and maybe you still do, but I don’t, not anymore. That's not the world I live in Thor.”  
His voice raised to meet hers, “And what shade is he?”  
“Maybe this isn’t about him, maybe it’s about me too, what I want, what I need,” she raged, “and I don’t need your judgement or for you to swoop in and save me.”  
He looked at her bewildered. “You’ve never needed _anyone_ to save you Felicity, I’m only wondering why you won’t save yourself this time. This guy got into your head and you’ve let him.”

“You don’t get to show up here and tell me all the things I’m doing wrong,” Felicity shouted as her eyes held back tears.  
“Not all the things, just one,” he snapped.  
She walked over to the door and flung it open. “Go home Thor, the girl you knew isn’t here anymore and this imperfect one is all that’s left.”  
“You want me to go?” he asked with tight lips which begged to say more.  
She looked at him as a tear slipped down her cheek. “You should leave.”

So he did; slamming the door behind him.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

He came back almost two hours later just as Felicity was walking down the path and the relief on her face was palpable.

Her ruby lips turned into a smile and her softly-smoked eyes in hues of silver and grey echoed that smile of relief as it bubbled up from her cheeks. She was wearing a black dress that had threads of burgundy and pink around the scooping neckline and for a moment it reminded him of a cloak she’d had as a child back on Asgard, though the fabric was heavier and the dress blossomed out from the waist before it stopped just above her knees. Her hair was up with tendrils of golden hair falling softly around her face, framing it perfectly. He could have stood there, silent, and stared at her for hours.

Until the sound of a throat clearing behind him made him turn and absolutely ruin the moment; _it was Gavin._

“I’ll just be a minute,” Felicity called down to Gavin who was waiting by his car, before she took Thor by the forearm, her fingers nowhere near touching in a full circle, off to the side of the park out of earshot.

“I was worried about you,” Felicity remarked, leaving her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry for what I said,” she added sadly as her eyes dropped to the floor and a sigh gently caressed her painted lips.  
“No,” Thor breathed as he put his hand on top of hers, “ _I’m_ sorry. I’m sorry I spoke like I did, I’m sorry I left like I did and I’m sorry.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and her thumb traced the side of his broad finger.  
“It’s fine,” she answered, barely above a whisper before she inhaled deeply and exhaled with a trembled smile.  
“No it’s not,” he corrected and then turned her hand so it was pressed between both of his. “You’re smart,” he smiled as he spoke, “The smartest person I know and if _you_ want to give this guy a second chance then it’s not for me to say you shouldn’t.”  
She looked towards Gavin; _if you want to…_  
“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted for the first time. “But I think I owe it to myself to figure that out.”  
He nodded softly, as much as it pained him to do so. Felicity was right, life was different for her down here and much had changed; whether he wanted to accept it or not.  
“Cisco has a key,” she added as she slipped her hand out from between his. “I won’t be late but you don’t need to wait up.”  
He nodded a second time, watching her as she walked away, her shoes making a melodic clip-clop on the cobbled path.  
“Have a nice night,” he whispered, but she never heard.

He just wanted her to be happy, even if that wasn't with him.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

  
The restaurant was pleasant enough; a little Italian place Felicity had passed by a few times but never had a reason to go into with its intimate lighting and the ambience of love in the little decorative touches. There was instrumental music playing softly through the sound system and a gentle ambience of a kitchen staff busying themselves whenever the portal doors to the kitchen swung open.

It was on the other side of the restaurant to where they were sat, but in the absence of any real conversation Felicity found herself watching it, trying to guess which table the orders would go to as they came through the doors, she was doing surprisingly well if she did say so herself.

“Are you enjoying your meal?” Gavin asked across the table, his velvet voice carrying over both the music and the ambient bustle.  
Felicity shot a glance down at her plate and soon realised she hadn’t eaten all that much despite the aroma of it deliciously teasing her taste buds.  
“Yeah, it’s lovely,” she answered mechanically.  
“You’ve barely touched it.”  
She offered her ‘date-not-a-date’ a vagrant smile. “Sorry, I guess…” she paused to study the engraving up the stem of the fork before she blew out an exhale. “I don’t understand why we’re here,” she finally said.

“You like Italian,” he shrugged with a sort of impish laugh that she might have once found endearing but not so much anymore.  
“You left,” she said blankly as her hands folded onto her lap. She looked up, trying to find the man she’d once cared for, but no matter how hard she squinted, everything seemed so different now. “And now you’re here.”  
“Because I made a mistake,” he sighed.  
“Then or now?”  
“Come on Felicity that’s not fair.”

There was a sort of tranquillity set over her. She wasn’t upset, heck she wasn’t even angry anymore – she was numb.  
“Tell me why you left, honestly?” she asked calmly; _maybe that’s what she was looking for._  
“Honestly?” he clarified before he took the white napkin and dabbed it against his lips. She nodded, _honestly_. “I never really felt like I had your heart completely, it was as though I merely filled a space while you waited for the person you really wanted.”  
He laid the napkin and his hands on the table as her brow furrowed with his words.

She had left a part of her heart on Asgard the day she had left.  
She’d never forgotten about Thor or the first home she ever known and perhaps she had lived in a perpetual state of _what if._  
_Had she pushed Gavin away because of it?_

“I got scared how much I cared about you,” he continued as his palms rolled back and forth over the edge of the table. “I was worried that the person you were waiting for would come and you’d leave me, and that…”  
His phone rung, stopping his words midsentence as he cradled it in his hand, looked down at the screen, smiled and then placed it face down back on the table. “Just work,” he remarked casually, though she hadn’t asked.  
Felicity smiled but there was an eerily discomfort sitting in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite dispel.  
O _r maybe she was just finding what ifs again?_

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Thor wasn't actively waiting by the window for Felicity to come home, no, he just enjoyed the way the city's lights hid the stars behind a blanket of florescent light... or at least that's what he was trying to tell himself.

The truth was a little different.

But before he could set his mind to dissecting the reasons he was standing in dim lighting staring at the curb, a car pulled alongside it and shut off its lights.

He counted the seconds where there was no movement as his hand fisted at his side and his teeth ground together at the molars.

One.  
_Get out of the car._  
Two.  
_Open the door._  
Three... four.... fiv-

The door opened and Felicity stepped out. It was then Thor realised he'd also been holding his breath.

He watched her take a few steps alone before the driver's side opened and Gavin ran around the car to match Felicity’s walk up the path.

Thor's hands fisted again and he let out a deep, raspy growl.

He watched them walk towards the front door but stop before reaching it. Everything in his heart told him to stop watching... but he just couldn't look away.

Felicity felt a gentle breeze tease the long strands of hair that had fallen down the sides of her face as she tasted the faint smell of the Chinese takeaways half a block away; anything to distract herself from the gnawing in her stomach.

What Gavin had said at dinner was still weighing on her mind and there was little she could do to shake it.

They stopped walking near the stoop of her building and Felicity momentarily considered whether to offer him a brief hug or a handshake when he leaned in for something most unexpected.

Thor felt his heart plummet as Gavin leaned in for a kiss and he finally tore himself away from the window.

_That he couldn't watch._

“Oh no, no,” Felicity said as she lifted her hand and backed a whole foot back. “I'm sorry, we're just not there Gavin.”  
“Are we ever going to be?”  
“I don't know,” she answered honestly, “and if that's too much uncertainty for you then I don't know what to tell you.”

“Felicity,” he purred and she hated how that made her feel, “I'm going to make it up to you. Show you that I've changed.”  
She blinked down at the sidewalk as she nodded half-heartedly; maybe she’d changed too. “Thank you for dinner.”  
She started to walk away when he caught her elbow. “Can I call you?”  
She felt anxious, upset and confused; but she nodded as she glanced up to her blackened window.

Felicity nodded because she couldn't continue being in love with a guy who would never love her back. _No more what ifs._

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

He climbed into bed and pretended to be asleep when he heard the apartment door open. He was _absolutely_ hiding from hearing about her date, hearing her probably gush about the man he’d like to drop off somewhere near Muspelheim and never return for.

He was entirely, unequivocally jealous and he couldn’t bear the thought of hearing her regale him with her night; _he just couldn’t._

Felicity looked over at the giant mass of man in the bed and sighed silently as she closed the door behind her and kicked off her shoes while she walked.

She waved her hand in front of him and when she got no reaction she turned by the bed and reached under her arm for the zip of her dress. She pulled it down smoothly and fed the capped sleeves off her shoulders and down her arms before it dropped from her waist.

One of Thor’s eyes plucked open to the sight of Felicity’s smooth back with her arms reaching to unclasp her ebony bra, with a simply flick of her wrist it opened and she shrugged that down her shoulders as well, leaving only the matching panties, a thin scrap of lace and satin, covering her flawless body.

He felt his body groan and the blood pulse as it rushed to his throbbing member before he realised it wasn’t right for him to see her this way and he forced that one, rogue eye closed; squeezing it as tightly as he could.

Felicity slipped on an oversized tee and a small pair of boxer-briefs before she stooped to pick up her discarded clothes. She tucked the bra into her drawer and hung the dress over the back of the reading chair to deal with in the morning.

She was mentally and emotionally drained and all she wanted to do was quiet the noise in her head for a little while. She looked down at Thor in the bed, his massive body encroaching on her side, despite his every attempt not to.

He didn’t look all that different to the young boy she had known, once. Where he once had a smooth jaw it was now a forest of stubble; but his lips were the same ones she had once imagined kissing, or saying her name softly with adoration and fondness.

The silly dreams of a child.

She filled her lungs with the still night air and pulled back the covers, smiling as she recounted a memory not unlike this.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

  
Unrest plagued many of the realms and civil war was ravaging Vanaheim. Asgard had been called upon and all those warriors that could be spared had been sent to fight back the armies of dissidents on that world. Felicity’s father had gone with them.

That night, like every night before it for the last two weeks had found Felicity uttering a prayer for her father’s safe return as she held a glowing sphere of light before she released it into the heavens, guiding his path home.

But that night was different than the 14 that had preceded it; because that night word had spread like wildfire that the skirmish had become something more and a great battle had been fought. The sky was red with the blood of the lost souls and the echoes of wailing could be heard from the streets below her bedroom window.

She had stood a vigil by the front door to their rooms, listening for heavy footsteps of palace guards come to tell her news she would try to bear as an Asgardian should – strong and resilient – but after hours of her stomach bending into knots at even the faintest of noises, Felicity realised that at 11 years old she couldn’t bear the news, not this night.

She hid herself in her bedroom and extinguished all but one light in the chamber as she stared helplessly at the rainbow bridge, just begging for the returning armies to include her father.

A knock on her bedroom door startled her and she stared at it as her breathing quickened and her heartbeat became erratic and thin.

She could see her hands shaking as she walked on tiptoes towards the door, with her nightgown spilling out like a puddle around her feet.

She bit back tears and trapped a slither of her cheek between her teeth to stop her lips from quivering as she opened the door.

She saw Thor’s face and her small body collapsed under the weight of her emotions. But she never hit the ground and the boy, not much older than her, scooped her up and carried her to her unkempt bed.

“Please don’t tell me,” she whispered as she sobbed against his chest. “I don’t want to know.” Her voice faded and crackled until it was little more than a whimper.  
“If you ask about your father, I do not know,” he replied with a gentle whisper before he lay her carefully on the bed. “But he is strong.”  
She nodded as she curled her knees to her chest.  
“But I’m not,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of being alone,” she added, her young voice broken with sobs.  
He carefully brushed hair back from her temple and kissed the top of her cheek, her tears bleeding into his lips.  
“You aren’t alone, you never will be,” he assured her before he kissed her again.

He walked around her bed and she felt the mattress bow just a bit as he climbed on and pressed his chest to her back. “You’ll never be alone Felicity, I promise you.”  
He wrapped his arm around her and he stayed with her that night, keeping true to his word.

Her father had returned in the morning, battle worn and bruised, but alive.

All these years later and Felicity hadn’t forgotten that night, or the feeling of safety she found in his arms, nor could she deny how much she craved that safety, that familiarity, now.

She climbed into bed and shuffled until the heat from his body warmed her back. With the skilled hands of a surgeon, Felicity carefully lifted one of his arms and lay it over her waist before folding her arm over the top.

And Thor just smiled.


	5. Heima | Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2019 crackies ;)

 

It was a month later and they had slept almost exactly like that every night since. Neither spoke about it, and in the morning there were a few precious moments where they simply shared a smile before the day took them. There was a quiet comfort in both choosing to not bring up the fact they slept nearly every night like virginal lovers; both a little worried that broaching the subject would either mean sharing something they didn’t think they should, or losing something they really didn’t want to.

So they stayed; in this holding pattern of never really admitting they both wanted it just as much.

Some mornings he woke up before her, and lived the silent moments in adoration of waking up alongside the girl he had pledged his heart to, long before he realised it. In those hushed moments he would imagine her, lying in his bed back on Asgard, bathed in the brilliantly-golden first rays of morning, wrapped in his sheets, invisibly marked by his kisses from the nights before. Happy. At peace. Home.

 _Home_.  
The word would echo in his thoughts; what it meant and what it could mean. In a few years their paths would deviate if they lived on separate worlds. He would ascend to the throne and age no longer as a mortal. If she stayed, here, on Midgard, she would age beyond him, becoming far more mortal than him.

There had been those before him with his name and there would be others after him; creating the illusion of Gods. But they lived and they died much the same; only give or take 5000 years. But if that long life was to be without her, perhaps he didn’t want it.

 _Home_.  
He’d once only thought of it as a place, rejecting any notion that it was another over the halls of the palace and the rivers and forests of Asgard itself. Only now his heart was torn. He’d found beauty in Midgard like he had not expected, friends like the one across the hall and the arms of a woman he could not imagine living without.

 _Home_.

That morning, like the ones before, it was a word that captured his thinking as he smiled at the back of her head; a tumble of blonde curls soaking up the sun that streamed in through the gauzy curtains, until she yawned.

He kept his eyes closed, stealing a few more languid moments where he could, as she stretched beside him before she turned like a square wheel thumping the mattress. He could sense her looking at him, staring him down, fixating on the flutter of his eyelashes or the twitch of his lips until she poked his nose with her finger and there was absolutely nothing he could do to not laugh.

His eyes flung open and he was met with her fresh face and curious eyes and with an amused smile painted on her nude lips.  
“Wake up lazy bones, you have work,” she took great delight in telling him and even more delight in the heavy groan that he let out as a result.

He wasn’t tired, not even a little bit, but he didn’t want to leave the comfort of this bed; or, more importantly, he didn’t want to leave her. But, Felicity didn’t notice his silent and well-hidden protests and she slipped out from the sheets.

Before she could fix them, he noted the way her cotton shorts had dropped below her hip bone and her black tank had scrunched up around her ribs, leaving him to look at a slither of her naked stomach, soft and milky, and the dimples at the small of her back when she turned. His fingers slid down the sheet, hidden from view, as he imagined grazing that warm skin instead of the empty, lifeless sheet.

He had begun teaching a Saturday morning class, in a form of combat the mortals on Midgard referred to as ‘boxing’ and for the last two weeks Felicity had gone with him.

“Perhaps I should introduce swords,” he announced as he reluctantly left the bed.  
Felicity stooped to collect her robe from the chair, stealing a few moments while Thor had his back to her to rove over the mounds of flesh that made up his delectably-large and muscular back.

She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but seeing _that_ was the best part of every morning… so far.  
“Swords?” she laughed beautifully, the sound of it exactly what Thor had wanted. “I don’t think that will go down too well.”  
“Mortals,” he mocked impishly as he pulled on a grey tee and padded towards the kitchen.  
“With all this money you’ve been making you’ll be able to afford your own place soon,” she chatted away as she followed him towards the kitchen.

Thor stopped beside the cabinet and turned slowly. “You want me to move out?”  
His question caught her by surprise and she shook her head rapidly, “No, I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant, you know, if you wanted to.” She looked back towards the bed they shared, _it wasn’t exactly a long-term arrangement._

“Is this something Gavin said?” Thor remarked as he made himself busy making the coffee; and trying not to show the absolute contempt he held for the man.  
It had been, but Felicity wasn’t about to add fire to an already tense situation. “No, he’s fine with how things are.”

That was a complete lie, but the truth of the matter was that having Thor living with her and a built in cock blocker was actually perfect for her. She might have been seeing Gavin, again, for over a month now but they had engaged in little more than a goodnight peck and frankly, Felicity was okay with that.

His house was getting renovations done, or so he had told her, and she had a couch-surfer (that shared the bed, but that was neither here nor there) so their intimacy was kept pretty much non-existent, and given she had yet to work through how she _actually_ felt about him, she wanted to keep the status quo for as long as she could.

She saw the way Thor tensed whenever Gavin’s name was mentioned; despite him trying so hard to disguise it, it was nearly the same look Cisco sported too and she understood that they were both simply looking out for her … as her friends.

“Anyway,” she hummed as she slunk around him and tickled her fingers up the outline of his spine. “No swords, promise me you won’t take swords.”

He turned and she was face to face with his pecs, so close that he could feel her breath sinking in through the weave on his shirt.  
“Are you not coming?” he asked and Felicity stepped back, despite her desire to stay there, nearly pressed against his wall of a body – or maybe that’s exactly _why_ she had to step back; afraid of what she wanted to do.  
Just a moment that close to him had seen her mind fill with flashes of him lifting her onto the counter, lowering her shorts, holding her at the back and just…“I have a haircut this morning,” she interrupted herself, keeping her eyes low so they wouldn’t give her lusty thoughts away.

“I’ll see you after though?” she added with a soft tip of her head upwards to catch his eyes.  
Thor smiled as he grabbed her waist and lifted her easily into the air. Felicity gasped, assuming she was still asleep or having some form of break in reality as he set her down on the counter.

He stood between her legs with one hand on the edge of the counter and the other drifting around her back. It returned with a bagel.

“Make sure you have breakfast,” he breathed as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll see you after.”  
He took another bagel from the bread bin behind her and chomped down as he slipped out of the kitchen with a wink.

Felicity only remembered to breathe when she heard the _click_ of the front door closing. She dropped her head into one hand while a bagel flopped limply in the other.

“Gaaah,” she grunted to herself, both annoyed and frustrated by the feelings that were becoming harder to ignore.

She wanted Thor.  
She _wanted_ him.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“Smile!” Cisco ordered as he pointed his phone at Thor.  
Thor, shirtless and fresh from the shower, took a few minutes to comprehend the words said, but by the time he did, Cisco was already sitting back down on the couch; photo taken.  
“What are you doing?” Thor asked as he towelled the ends of his blonde locks.  
“It’s for your profile pic,” Cisco grinned as he tapped away on his phone and kicked his feet up on Felicity’s coffee table.  
Thor gently wacked his feet down and Cisco responded with feigned hurt. “My profile for what?” the bulky God asked.  
“You heard the people at the gym this morning,” Cisco raved, “They wanted to know your ats.”  
“My ats?”  
Cisco sighed. “Social Media handles.”

Thor walked around the table, idly stopping to straighten the magazines on the top. “I know that you’re saying words but I don’t know what they mean.”  
“Look if you’re going to market yourself you need a page and Instagram is a good place to start.” Cisco turned his phone screen towards Thor who leaned in for a closer look.  
“And people see this?”  
“Yeah and like it and talk to you. Didn’t you guys have that where you’re from?”  
Thor trawled a comb of fingers through his hair. “I grew up rurally,” he remarked.  
“Like a commune?”  
He liked the sound of the word and nodded before he shrugged, never really committing to an answer; but it would do.

Cisco’s eyes widened with questions until he remembered he was in the middle of something. “What’s your last name and is it weird that I don’t know that?”  
“Odi-,” he paused, his mouth still open. “Smoak,” he hastily corrected.  
Cisco looked up from his phone, utterly perplexed. “You’re last name is Odismoak?”  
“Just Smoak,” the larger man corrected with a brief smile. “Odi is, uh, my middle name.”  
He busied himself folding clean towels he’d brought back from the laundromat on the way home from the gym, in the hopes Cisco would leave it at that.

He didn’t. “So your name is Thormas Odi Smoak?”  
A quick nod.  
“Huh,” Cisco muttered, before his breathing turned into a chuckle.  
“Something amusing?”  
“No,” Cisco remarked as he turned in the couch and dropped his arm over the back of it. “It’s just that the first part of your name kind of sounds like Thor and your middle name is kind of like Odin, as in the Nordic mythology, aka the government cover-up to make us think it’s not real.”  
Thor coughed loudly. “I’ve never noticed.”  
“You don’t have a brother called Loki do you?” Cisco jested.  
Thor’s lips straightened. “ _Adopted_ brother.”  
“Wait…what?”  
“No,” Thor laughed boisterously, “that would be ridiculous.”

There were a few minutes of tentative silence before Thor spoke up again. “So what’s next on this profile thing?”  
“Oh right, a bio.” Thor blinked blankly. “Something about you,” Cisco added.  
“I like snakes.”  
Cisco waited for a laugh that never came; Thor wasn’t joking. “Wait, I got it.” He typed quickly on his phone and a few seconds later, he read the bio aloud. “‘Lifts iron, likes (actual) snakes’. Now to add some content.”

Before more could be said, the door opened and Felicity walked into her apartment. She stole Thor’s attention immediately and without even having to try. She looked radiant, as she always did in his opinion, but her hair was a little shorter now, a shade or two lighter and straightened so it hung beautifully around her shoulders.

She caught him looking; not that he tried to hide it, and for a moment she felt a hot flush of embarrassment warm and redden her cheeks.

“What are you boys doing?” she asked as she dropped her keys into the ceramic bowl and pushed the door closed with her foot.  
“Setting up Thormas with an insta account,” Cisco remarked from the couch without turning.  
Felicity looked over at Thor, who simply shrugged.

It was then she saw the towels he’d been busy folding. “You did laundry?”  
He nodded proudly. “Just towels, I wasn’t sure you’d want me touching your…” he paused to blink away, but he couldn’t help but look back at her second later, “Your intimates.”  
Felicity touched her neck and breathed out a soft chuckle. “Yeah, right, of course, totally,” she remarked; just an ad hoc of words.  
“I could if you…” he stepped forward and she held her breath.  
“It’s fine,” she answered, the words just as shaky as she felt her knees.

He dug into his pocket as he spoke. “I also have this for you.” He pulled out a couple of hundred dollars and placed it in her hands, along with three folded bits of paper.  
“What’s this?” she asked, laying the contents of his pocket beside her keys.  
“The money I got today.”  
“You should keep this,” she said as she pushed it towards him.  
“Cisco was saying there are two bedroom apartments here, maybe we can look into those instead of me finding my own place,” Thor offered, his tongue fretting across his bottom lip after he was finished speaking.

He didn’t want to leave Felicity and he was, in fact, quite comfortable sharing a bed with her every night, but after what she had casually brought it into the conversation this morning, he began to realise she might not have been as comfortable with the sleeping arrangements as he was; and her comfort was above his. Always.

She smiled thankfully and offered him a small nod of acceptance; _maybe that would be for the best._  
“And what’s this?” she chuckled, bemused, as she opened one of the folded pieces of paper. She read it aloud, “‘Sarah 202-555-0142’, is this a phone number?” Felicity cocked her head to the side and dropped the paper as though it was burning her hand. “Why are you giving me that?” Curiosity overtook her and she opened the other two. Both phone numbers, different girls.

“They’re obviously for you,” she quipped, trying to hold back words more terse and thoroughly stained in jealously, as she collected the three numbers and handed them back to Thor.  
He looked down at this, adorably confused. “What are they for?”  
“They want you to call them,” Felicity shrugged as she pushed the money into the drawer below and stepped away.  
“Why?”  
She sighed, far louder than she had meant to. “I suppose they want to go out with you.”  
“Where?”  
Cisco finally looked up from his phone. “On a date probably.”  
Felicity could see the concept was thoroughly lost on Thor and it wasn’t because he’d didn’t understand the concept of romantically seeing someone, but the word, _date_ , itself was a foreign one. Asgardians didn’t exactly _date_ , they fell in love, they confessed said love and they got married; earthy concepts of going out to get to know someone would have seemed odd; and to Felicity, years ago, they did too.

On Asgard, you either _knew_ , or they weren’t the one for you.  
“Like a movie, or dinner,” she explained, choosing her tone carefully; after all it wasn’t _entirely_ his fault three girls threw themselves at him in _one_ morning.  
Cisco had gone back to his phone and Felicity had walked halfway to the kitchen, with Thor following her.  
“That’s a date?” he asked softly.  
“Sure,” she said as she idly filled a glass of water from the tap. “It’s just about getting to know a person in a setting like that.”  
She watched as his brow furrowed and his eyes glanced off for a moment, before they charged back to her, full and beguiling. “Would you like to go out on a date with me, tonight?”

The glass shook in her hand and little beads of water spilled over the edge. She hadn’t expected that and for a moment she allowed herself to believe that it wasn’t just him not understanding the nuances of a date; _namely platonic friends don’t date._

She warred with her answer for a few seconds as his hopeful smile began to fade. “I can’t, I’m sorry,” she answered softly as she tipped the water into the sink. “I have a thing to go to tonight.”  
Thor stood in the doorway, her only way out, foiling her anxious need to run away.

“With Gavin?”  
He didn’t really need her answer, it was written on her face the moment the question left his lips and she looked up at him.  
“There is this charity gala on that he’s taking me to,” she looked down and vagrantly studied the lines on the floor. “Maybe we can see a movie another time?” she offered; after all she was certain that was all he meant – he couldn’t possibly mean anything else.

“Of course,” he answered sombrely as he stepped to the side of the doorway to let her pass.  
“You should call Sarah,” she added as she stopped mid stride and turned back to face him. The words were like acid to her throat, but maybe seeing him with someone else would finally force her to put her ridiculous crush to one side. After all, it had been well over a decade.

He gave her nothing but a pitiable smile.  
_Sarah wasn’t who he wanted to date._

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Felicity stood outside Cisco’s apartment with her hand floating just above the door for what seemed like an eternity, just waiting for her mind to make a decision, but it was soon made for her when the door opened without prompting and she was face to face with her good friend and colleague.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Cisco asked as he counted the money in his hands. “Just in time for pizza though.”  
“I can’t stay,” Felicity remarked softly as she smoothed her palms down the straight line of her red dress. “Just coming to say goodbye.”  
Cisco slipped past her with a subtle wave. “Have a good night,” he offered half-heartedly before he ducked down the stairs. Felicity peeked into the apartment and caught Thor coming out from the bathroom.  
“Cisco’s gone to pay for the pizza,” she remarked as she stayed floating around the doorway.  
“You look beautiful,” he said without even a hint of cynicism or irony.  
Her scarlet lips turned up at the tips into a raptured smile. “Thank you,” she answered, barely above a whisper.  
The dress hugged her figure perfectly, with capped sleeves and a subtle dip in the neckline, Thor’s eyes were drawn first to the salient line of her collarbone rising behind alabaster skin, then down to the tight slopes of her breasts beneath the clinched bodice and the womanly shape of her waist and swerving hips; a body built for worshipping and a heart made to be loved.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, matching the softness in her voice.  
She blinked away, severing the eye contact as her hands tensed at the sides of her body. “I probably won’t be home tonight,” she admitted, refusing to look up from her feet.  
Gavin had asked her to stay in a hotel room in the City; she’d agreed. Despite the reservations swarming around her head she needed to make a decision whether to make this thing work again or walk away, and she would make that decision tonight.

He hid his anguish well behind an uneven smile. “I hope you have a nice time.”  
Cisco arrived back with a pizza balanced on one hand and a bottle of soda tucked under his arm. “You have 300 followers already, can you believe it?” he mumbled as he scrolled through his phone.  
“I can,” Felicity chuckled, a soft blush plumping her cheeks. “Goodnight boys.”

She walked away with a heavy air of ‘all the things unsaid’ drifting between them.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

It was an hour later, with nothing more than crumbs left in the pizza box and Cisco breaking a full body sweat as he tried to lift Mjölnir off the ground. “Is this thing magnetised or…?” he huffed as Thor paced the living room.  
“You’re just not worthy,” he mumbled as he pulled strands of his locks through his fingers. “This Gavin,” he started.  
“A real jerk,” Cisco huffed through his strain.  
“Why would she be with him?”  
Cisco released his grip on the hammer’s handle and brushed the back of his hand across his forehead. “I don’t know what to tell you man, but _I_ don’t like the guy, and if she was _my_ cousin I’d probably march on up to him and, boom,” Cisco announced as he jabbed a fist into the air.  
“That’s how you settle things here?” Thor asked, a smile turning up his lips. Felicity had led him to believe you weren’t supposed to just pick people up or talk with your fists; what Cisco was saying flew in the face of that.

“Here as in Starling?” Cisco laughed, bemused.  
“Uh, sure, is that how it works here?”  
“If you’re doing it for the right reasons, I mean, probably,” Cisco rambled. He’d only spoken out of bravado, but seeing Gavin being taken down a peg by a human tank would be something he would _absolutely_ watch.

“We should go then,” Thor decided loudly as he marched towards the door.  
“Wait,” Cisco called after him.  
Thor huffed hair out of his face as he turned around.  
“Clothes.”  
“What about them?” the Prince remarked as he glanced down at his white tank top and dusty jeans.  
“This is a _gala_ , you’re not getting in like that and we aren’t getting in without tickets.” A spark lit up in Cisco’s eyes. “I think I can get us the tickets.” He cracked his knuckles as he took a seat in front of his computer. He wasn’t Felicity-level; but he’d been meaning to stretch his hacking legs for some time now and this was a good a time as any.

It took him 27 minutes, but he’d already decided that when he retold the story he was absolutely going to say it only  
took him 7 minutes. It was now time for a wardrobe change.

“I don’t think that’s going to fit me,” Thor remarked as his forefinger and thumb stroked along his bristled jaw while he stared down at the suit in Cisco’s hands.  
“It’s fine, it might be a little short, but we’re basically the same size,” Cisco countered.

Thor looked down at the man nearly 2 feet smaller who he was certain could fit entirely into Thor’s shadow. But, regardless he took the suit and left to get changed.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

 _Short_ was an understatement.  
The pants stopped mid-calf and the zip barely made it halfway. The shirt looked like a second skin, pale and near see-through and the ass of the pants was downright obscene.

But there wasn’t much choice.  
He needed to see her.

However, the two only got as far as the landing before Edna, coming up the stairs, stopped them with a hitched brow.

“Where are you boys heading looking like that?” the older woman asked as she looked Thor up and down and laughed.  
“A Gala ma’am,” Cisco replied sheepishly.  
She nodded towards Thor. “It looks like this one is wearing baby clothes.”  
“I don’t own a suit,” Thor shrugged as he pulled down the shirt in an attempt to cover his crotch.  
“Come on now,” she teased as she gestured him towards the stairs going up. “My late husband was about the same build as you once, I think I have one of his old suits lying around for memories’ sake.”

She wasn’t wrong.  
The brown suit might have been tailored three decades before, but it was a perfect fit.

As they were leaving Edna stopped Thor in the doorway. “Just tell her how you feel,” she said softly before she nodded him off.

_If only he could._

**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
She was alone when he saw her, sipping on a flute of champagne with one elbow leaning on the top of a brushed chrome bar leaner. She was captivated by the sound of the live band as one of her feet swayed along to the melody. He walked through the crowds towards her, taking images in his head when she curtained her hair to one side or brushed her fingers down the slope of her neck.

Her aroma he could imagine drifting past his nose the closer he got, and the moment he could reach her, his fingers entwined with hers.

“Do you want to dance?”

He led her wordlessly and willingly to the dancefloor and, amongst a handful of strangers, he wrapped his arm around her body, nestled the heel of his palm into the small of her back and held her trembling hand in his own.

“You’re here,” she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the music as they swayed together, barely a dance but perfect just as it was.  
“I’m here.”  
He pressed his cheek to her temple and inhaled her as his hand took gentle care of her body, leading her in small circles with no plan or purpose; but to enjoy the moment.

She could feel his heart beating against her palm as it formed around the hard convex of his chest and for a moment she realised how easy it would be to lose herself in him; in this moment, for however long they could make it last.

“Where did you learn to dance?” she asked, smiling up at him after he kissed her temple.  
“Don’t tell me you’ve been here so long you’ve forgotten us,” he breathed, a softness in his eyes and a kindness in his smile, even when teasing her.  
She shook her head delicately as her fingers gripped his chest. “Of course I remember.”

  
**| >9 years ago, Asgard<|**

He had been watching her for what seemed like hours, though it had been only a handful of minutes, but she had yet to see him there; standing across the market place, watching her lose her inhibitions to the musicians playing a lively song; in her blue dress and bare feet.

She moved far more gracefully than she would have ever given herself credit for and the sun itself took note as it shone its most radiant afternoon rays directly onto her, making her hair glisten like spun gold as it danced in spirited curls.

Then, as she turned, she spotted him; arms folded beneath his riding cloak, hair braided towards one side and a smile that didn’t falter, even for a second, when caught. Felicity beckoned him nearer and he moved like a bolt of lightning urged him.

“Dance with me,” she laughed, joyous and free from the subdued restrictions living in the palace often placed on them.  
He shook his head but took an apple from a nearby vendor for a gold coin to watch her. The song finished just as he took his first bite and she slunk over to him; half his height and with a puff in her voice. “Is the Prince scared?” she teased as she brushed back messy tendrils of hair from her blushed cheeks.  
“I’m an Asgardian Prince, I fear nothing,” he growled before he took another ravenous bite.  
Quite without thinking, Felicity took a bite from the other end of his apple and smirked as she chewed; both of them obliviously unaware of the low whispers that had begun around them.

Whispers that would inevitably make their way into the halls of the Palace and the ears of the Allfather; because people saw what neither of them would admit.

The 14 year old Prince offered Felicity the rest of the apple, but she shook her head softly. “All I want is for you to dance with me,” she pleaded as she folded her hand into his.  
He leaned in close, brushing his nose through a curtain of soft, blonde hair. “I don’t know how to dance,” he whispered.

When he pulled back, her hand was still in his and her rose-tinted lips were buckled into a sweet smile. “Then I’ll teach you.”  
Thor looked around, finally sensing the eyes watching them. “Not here.”  
She nodded and took his hand, running him from the crowd down an alley and into a cobbled clearing where their only companions were a few chickens pecking at spilled grains.

“Here?” he asked, amusingly mystified.  
“Here is as good a place as any,” she answered before taking a deep breath of the jasmine-scented air. “It’s not like we can do it in the Palace, your Governess doesn’t like me.”  
“Nonsense,” he rebuked with a laugh before he took another bite of apple. “Everyone likes you,” he added before he’d finished the mouthful.

“Oh she certainly doesn’t,” Felicity jested as she puffed out her chest and lifted her nose haughtily into the air. “She only doesn’t say anything because of who my father is. But the scowl speaks for itself really.”

“I’ll ask for a new one, or none at all, I hardly need one,” he announced as he threw the apple core to the chickens.  
She looked down at the waste and shook her head. “If they don’t finish that, you’ll be picking it up when we leave,” she said with an adamant air about her he didn’t dare argue with.

“It’s no mind, I like being out here anyway,” she added after taking in another deep breath. “Why do you want to learn to dance?” she asked as she swayed on her tiptoes.  
“All I said was I didn’t know how,” he answered with a sly grin.  
“Right, but you would have already left if you didn’t want to learn.”  
He opened his mouth to retort her words; but she was correct.  
“So Thor Odinson, why do you want to learn to dance?”  
“Maybe I want to impress someone,” he shrugged, answering as nonchalantly as the butterflies in his stomach would let him.  
“Oh,” her brow pinched inwards.

“There is a festival coming up,” he explained while she nodded; the lantern festival was on the cusp of the weather changing as it celebrated the dimming sun and welcomed the soft touch of winter with its longer nights and snowy peaks.

It was one of Felicity's favourites; where the streets filled with the smells of comforting spices and the sounds of music that one could easily lose themselves in.

It was a night of regaling and revelries.

“Perhaps if I could show her I could dance.” He offered her a flash of a smile he thought said it all; but the nuance was lost on Felicity as she was too busy regretting her decision to help him impress one of the many girls that were destined to marry a prince. None of which were her.

“Of course, I'm sure she would,” Felicity remarked, hurriedly. She didn't need to know any more.  
“But if you're teaching me to dance what shall I teach you?” he queried.  
Felicity tapped a finger against her lip before an idea struck her. “To fight.”

Thor backed away with his palms raised. “Your father would never allow it.”  
“We wouldn't have to tell him,” she argued.  
“You don't need to fight.”  
“I'm not planning on joining the Valkyrie, I know they wouldn't have a half breed like myself,” she sighed, a bitter taste filling her mouth. “But surely you can show me something?”  
He thought about it for a moment before he ran a slightly grubby hand through his hair. “Alright,” he agreed, “but if we get caught; it was all your idea.”  
“Deal.” She held out her hand and he shook it, both of them lingering long after the promise had been sealed.

And so, over the next few weeks Felicity taught Thor to dance, as elegantly and gracefully as his brawn and long limbs would let him; and he taught her ways to defend herself, irrespective of her size.

But, their reciprocal lessons were cut short when Felicity left for Midgard, two weeks before the lantern festival.

Two weeks before he could dance with her

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“I remember,” she hummed quietly again as she moved with him, weightless and floating across the varnished floor. “We never did finish those lessons.”  
He didn't answer, but offered her a tender smile when her eyes glanced up his chest. He was living in this moment, this dance; even if it was 9 years’ late.

“Whoever you were learning for was probably very happy regardless,” she breathed. As she held his hand she swore she could feel his pulse at the tips of the fingers that curved around her svelte hand.  
“That's all I ever wanted for her,” Thor uttered before the song started to fade. “To be happy.”  
They parted as the band finished.  
“Are you happy?” he whispered.

Her eyes widened, looking at the sincerity in his as a silent sigh fell from her parted lips. “Thor, I…,”  
“Felicity,” a hand clasped her at the elbow and turned her, “there are some people here you should meet.” Names were shot at her to remember; and hands to shake, but she ignored them both and turned back around, only to find Thor was gone.

  
“This was a mistake,” Thor remarked as he took Cisco’s forearm and led him from the party.  
“You’re not going to start a fight with the guy?” Cisco lamented, “Because I had my camera ready to roll and that would be-.”  
Thor cut him short with a fierce side-glare as they stepped out into the night. “She’s where she wants to be, I have no business trying to change that.”

Felicity looked for him for a while; until her mind started to wonder whether she’d heard what she’d thought she’d heard.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

She stepped wearily into Suite 542, a step behind Gavin and with her heart somewhere else; not even the magnificence of the city skyline could bring much more than a fleeting smile to her expression.

She felt his hands crawl up her spine as he closed the door behind them and her heart sunk.

“Why here?” she asked as she stepped away from him and walked idly towards the wall of tinted windows just ahead of her.  
“I told you, my place is out of the City and it’s a building site right now,” he jested as he followed her into the room.

She could feel his presence behind her and she caught his reflection in the glass.  
“You still live in it, so it can’t be all that bad,” she mentioned to his hazy reflection as her arms encircled her waist.  
“I wouldn’t force that on you.”  
Her eyebrows winced as he curtained her hair to one side and kissed the slope of her neck. “You should get _comfortable_ ,” he whispered near her ear as his fingertips pinched the zipper on her dress.

She stepped away, forcing a space between them. “Could I see some photos? I’d love to see your place,” she chatted, watching his lips twitch at the corners as she spoke.  
“Why all the interest?”  
“Why all the secrets?”  
“Felicity, baby.” He stepped towards her and she stepped back.  
She couldn’t bury the niggling feeling that she was missing something; perhaps it was self-sabotage because of her long-discarded feelings for Thor rearing their head and making themselves known like a band of bongo drums; but she couldn’t fight her intuition, not without being sure.

“You’re right,” she blinked heavily and shook her head softly. “It doesn’t matter.” She watched as he put the hotel room key, his wallet and his phone on the table just ahead of her. “How about a drink?”  
She nodded towards the small kitchenette and minibar across the open-plan living room.  
He slapped his palms together as he walked away. With his back turned to her, Felicity grabbed his phone and walked around the corner where he didn’t have a clear view of her.

“Red okay?” he asked across the room.  
Felicity worked her magic as quickly as she could, decoding his phone wasn’t exactly _good girlfriend_ behaviour and there was a high chance that when she found nothing on it she was going to be wracked with guilt; but she needed to know.

“Anything else?”  
“There is some premixes.”  
“Something sweeter?”

She listened to the clanking in the distance as she kept her eyes focused on a task.

Until she found what she was looking for.

“There is a nice Moscato.”  
She walked with purpose, heels scuffing carpet, before she stopped near the kitchen counter and placed his phone, screen-side up, on the granite top.  
“Who is she?”  
He looked down at his phone and Felicity could practically smell the perspiration coming off his forehead.

It was a picture of Gavin with a pretty redhead; kissing for the selfie and date stamped last weekend.  
“It’s not what you think,” he replied and Felicity laughed.  
“I think it’s exactly what I think,” she bickered as she scrolled to another photo; same day, different pose. “Tell me again it’s not what I think.” Another photo had her behind him, hands roving his chest. “I’ll wait,” another photo that showed them, waist up, managed to surprise even Felicity.

The woman was pregnant.  
Very pregnant.

She stepped back, her mouth aghast and her eyes wide with disbelief.  
“You’re right, it wasn’t what I thought, it’s much worse.”

“It’s just…,” he started.  
“Who is she?” Felicity demanded.  
“My fiancée.”

“Way worse,” Felicity muttered as she stepped towards the door.  
He followed her to it, “But I want to be with you now. I don’t love her.”  
She stopped near the door and looked at him. “How long? How long have you been with her?”  
He shook his head, unwilling to answer.  
“Just,” she swatted his hand away as it reached for her, “stop me if I’m wrong here. You were with me, you met her, you had us both until you left me, knocked her up and decided you still needed that bit on the side, enter me,” she laughed snidely as she clutched her bag against her body. “Does that about cover it?”  
“It’s not exactly like that,” he pleaded.  
“But near enough?”  
His silence was answer enough for her and she swung open the door. He grabbed her wrist tightly as she went to leave. “We can talk about this,” he growled, his face changing from fret to anger.

_“It doesn’t matter how much bigger they are than you Felicity, use their size as your advantage,” Thor had said as she stared across the deserted courtyard at him, her hair knotted at the crown of her head and her normal gown replaced with torn trousers._

They had never finished their lessons in combat either; but he had taught her enough.

She twisted her wrist in his grip, which made him stumble forward just as she brought her knee up and jerked him down. She heard the moment her knee made contact with the soft part of his pelvis and he let go of her immediately, stumbling backwards into the hotel suite, winded and no doubt with a blinding pain between his legs.

“Don’t call me, don’t write me, don’t email me, don’t message me, don’t you ever speak to me again,” Felicity growled as she leaned closer, “and don’t you _ever_ put your hands on me.”

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

Felicity tiptoed up the stairs a little after 11pm with her shoes hanging off her wrist and her hair drooping around her tear-sodden cheeks. It was stupid really, she hadn’t fallen in love with Gavin this time, but she’d let him in again and the tears that had marred her cheeks were hot with anger at herself for that.

She paused at the landing, walking her head between Cisco’s door and her own. She didn’t want to see anyone and the darkness under the door of her own apartment gave her hope that maybe, she didn’t have to.

But, as she took the key out of her purse and threaded it into the lock, she heard the door across the landing open.  
“Felicity?” The voice of her childhood friend broke the thin façade she had put up and Felicity sobbed her shoulders forward, a fresh torrent of tears breaking from her eyes.

When he touched her shoulder she turned with his hand and fell against his chest, burying herself in his welcoming arms.

“Felicity, what happened?” he asked, panic making his words fast and shaky.  
“I’m such an idiot,” she sniffed, letting the smell of his body fill her senses and remind her of all the things she couldn’t have.  
He lifted her chin and brushed back her hair, his eyes fraught with distress when he saw the mascara tracks down her cheeks.  
“What did he do?” he asked bitterly, his shoulders straightening, his breath deepening and his jaw tensing.  
“It doesn’t matter, it’s my fault for thinking that,” she paused to bite back more tears. “I don’t know what’s so wrong with me, why aren’t I enough for someone?”

“For someone who really sees you, who knows you; you’re more than enough, you’re everything,” he replied as his fingertips traced a fresh tear along her jaw.

She stepped back and the door behind her creaked open against her weight.  
“And where do I find that?” she sighed, disillusioned and broken.

He stepped forward, took her face between his massive hands, stooped his body – just enough – and he kissed her. Light and gentle to start, but when she didn’t pull away, it deepened, their lips rolling against each other like the tide kisses the sand.

Cisco stopped in his doorway, blinking at the sight. “Oh, _those_ kind of cousins,” he whispered to himself as he slunk back into his apartment and, very carefully and silently, closed the door.


	6. þik | You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 😏😏  
> I put on my extra dramatic pants for this one 🙃🙃

His hands fell away from her cheeks with an electric graze to the very last finger as they stood there, silent and breathless.

Felicity's trembling hand found the doorknob behind her, and she curled her fingers tightly around it as Thor looked down at her glistening, full lips; still parted around the ghost of their demonically passionate kiss.

As his eyes crept up towards hers, Felicity felt the pull of each unsteady breath she took across her chest. Her mind flooded with explanations; none of which were as simple as the single thought in Thor's mind, namely how much he wanted to do _that_ again.

 _No_ , her mind was addled with explanations that ranged from the simple 'He was trying to make her stop talking' to far more elaborate reasons that included momentary psychosis.

But, as his lips sat dangerously close to hers and each agonizingly-slow breath they took was shared, Felicity acted on something far more carnal.

She kissed him.  
Soft and timid at first while she discovered the pillowed feeling of his mouth with a light flick of her tongue.

It was as if kissing a feather; a perfect, beautiful feather, and Thor moaned at her delicate touch. The guttural sound of pleasure that escaped his mouth lifted Felicity onto her to toes deepening the kiss until it was ravenous and urgent, before the door swung open behind them.

With their lips still tangled, they stumbled backwards into the room. The threads of white light from the moon that streamed through the naked windows blended with the soft orange glow from a lamp in the corner, casting hazy shadows throughout the room.

As the kiss grew shamelessly wanton and husky moans filled the humid air between them, Thor lifted Felicity easily, and instinctively her legs coiled around his waist before he booted the door shut behind them. _Thud_.

It took him three galvanic strides to cross the shadowy room and when he reached the bed, he dropped her onto it with a billowing puff of air. When she fell, their lips parted for only a count of a few seconds before Thor leaned down and captured hers again while Felicity fumbled with the zip under her arm.

They shed most of their clothes in a flurry until Felicity was wearing only a dusky pink lingerie set and Thor, a charcoal Henley and a pair of stripy boxer-briefs. Her hands knotted viscerally into his shirt just as she nipped at the edge of his bottom lip. Hastily he removed it while she raked her nails up his defined torso. With his enormous arm banded around her slender back, Thor carefully towed Felicity up the bed, climbing on after her.

Delicately he slipped his arm out from underneath her and she sighed at the mattress’ embrace as he peppered luscious and whiskery kisses down her throat. His body was immense above her. His chest solid as she wove eager fingers through the valleys and over the taut mounds, all while his mouth travelled further down her body.

Her chest was heaving with short and erratic breaths by the time his lips reached the tip of her breastbone, where he stilled and gently blew up towards her neck. His eyes found hers even in the thin fingers of light, and she knew he was waiting for a sign from her that this could move past the realms of where it was and into the one that you can’t ever really come back from.

Any semblance of logic or consequential thinking had long since abandoned Felicity, buried beneath a figurative tonne of _want_ and _desire_ and need and ache _and_ … She combed her nails coarsely over his scalp and tangled her fingers in his long, unruly hair as her hips rucked against his body, appeasing his conscience and giving him the answer he sought.

The velvety softness of his breath was the cause of the first tingle that trembled through the aching folds of Felicity's sex as Thor's kiss fell away from her body at the rise of her mound.

She writhed in the plush comforter, hands grabbing fistfuls as an insatiable sigh broke from her crimson lips. She felt the first kiss, even through the satin and lace fabric of her panties, like the most wonderful electric current that her body surrendered to almost immediately, and the second such kiss on her nether lips had her breathlessly begging for more.

He didn't deny her as he kissed her sex again while he buried his nose in her sweet and heady aroma; a scent his body told him he'd known his whole life but had only now discovered.

His cock was tortuously hard and throbbing as he continued to fold his lips around her sweltering heat. With his thumbs on her thighs, Thor parted her legs wider before he delicately licked the tip of his tongue through the creases of her apex, tasting the delectably salty beads of sweat that had nestled in the lines.

He took his time tracing the edges of her panties as he watched her chest shudder with every gusty breath she took. As much as he wanted to devour her like a turkey leg during a victory feast, salacious appetite aside, he wanted her whispered pleasure and her slow creeping arousal more. He wanted her languid kisses and to worship at her feet. He would treat her like the princess she had always been in his heart.

Kissing through the thin fabric was a tease that had them both nursing aching need as her arousal bled through the weave and wet his lips. Her thumbs hooked over her panties’ waistband before she shuffled them down an inch, where Thor caught them and tore them the rest of the way down her legs before firing them across the room; apparently not as in control of his insatiability as he thought.

With one leg spread with pointed toes towards a corner of the bed and the other looped over his shoulder with her heel pressed to his spine; he leaned down and licked the flat of his tongue, in one sweep, though her wet folds. He felt her shiver before he did it a second, third, and fourth time until Felicity was delirious with the sudden bursts of pleasure that had her bucking off the mattress.

His tongue was soon skirting her clit, savouring in the way her body reacted to him in enchantingly happy mewls and the steady roll of her hips against the bed. His fingers on one hand skated over her silken thigh, causing an explosion of prickles in their wake, while his other hand held her firmly to the bed. She enjoyed both, the gentleness of his fingertips and the forcefulness of his palm sinking into the fleshy rounds of her thighs, all while his tongue explored her sweltering heat and his teeth nipped, ever-so-slightly, at her tingling pearl.

Felicity reactively lifted her upper back off the bed as her fingers twisted impishly in his hair, when a sudden and impulsive moan surged from between her lips and echoed off the painted walls.

Her eyes hooked onto his as he arched his brows up towards her while his mouth stayed buried in her folds, just memorising the sight of her flustered and aroused, wearing ecstasy like a veil. With a further sweep of his riotous tongue and the gentle pull on her swollen clit as he sucked her inwards, Felicity came with a convulsions and spirited sighs.

Her silky release blanched his lips and covered his fingers as he added them to the mix, coaxing her spend with strokes down the inside of her quivering walls. Panting, she fell backwards and instinctively her legs started to close around him as each shudder of her orgasm jolted her svelte body.  
His hand nailed her tightly to the bed as her other heel dug into his back while the crook of her leg created almost a chokehold around his neck. He smiled, charming but goofy and even though she couldn’t see, as he basked in the sweetness of her spend and the feistiness with which she reacted.

But he wasn’t finished yet.

Languidly, Thor kissed back over the soft rise of her belly and over her skin, misted with a thin veil of perspiration, as her body trembled below him. He paused at the edge of her lacy bra and smiled up her heaving chest with wet and glistening lips, coated in her spend.

Wordlessly he drew the cups of her bra down and fed the straps off her slender shoulders, exposing her to his rapt gaze. Her breasts were perfect little mounds that he cupped easily in his large and sinewy hands, palming them as he peppered delicate kisses along each curve.

Felicity sat up on one fist with her legs spread either side of him; widely to accommodate his sheer size. She tugged on the elastic waist of his briefs as she chewed her bottom lip curiously; and, just like that, they were gone, discarded across the room with hers. His naked form pushed against hers as his long, thick rod pressed into her thigh. She swallowed a bubble of nervous energy as her fingers sought out his cock.

They kissed devoutly as she found him and wrapped her lithe fingers around his pulsing shaft. She tugged his length leisurely while her thumb teased over the head and back through his wet slit, gathering his sticky arousal.

As their kiss deepened, Felicity lowered to the bed before Thor lifted her lips as he pulled his back from the enraptured kiss. Silently, but for a low groan that dripped from each breath he took, Thor dropped his mouth to her neck, discovering its salty warmth with each trickled kiss.

She positioned one leg around his waist and lined his cock up with her thrumming entrance before her heel spurred him on and he sunk, slowly, inside her warm, wet body. Her walls were convulsing in remnants of her last orgasm, which drew Thor in deeper as sweat formed at the crevice of her neck for him to kiss away.

Her body swelled around him, and she could feel the delicious stretch as she swallowed his thick and veiny rod, until all she could do was part her ripe and rosy lips in a ragged gasp.

She took the last inch of him with a tremulous sigh after his finely curved lips fell away from hers. Seated to the hilt within her crushing walls, Thor sat up on his palms and looked down at her. Shadows cast across her face, hiding most of it from careful scrutiny, but as she reached up her fingertips and wove them down his hairless chest, a wet slip-n-slide of muscles and sweat, he caught a flirty smile that turned up her full lips and lifted her cheeks.

In vivid dreams he had pictured a moment so similar, granted there wasn’t the sweet aroma of vanilla and sage that often crept into his dreams and there were no oil lanterns or candles burning nearby that bathed her in decadent orange hues. Nor were they absconded in a room that they shared on Asgard as husband and wife. But her smile was just as he had imagined it. It had been unexplainable then, a woman that visited him while he slept, a woman who gave him comfort in times of battle and who he fought for despite never truly knowing who she was, her face shrouded in his dreams, though she had felt so familiar to him.

All these years and he had never been shown her face, only her smile, but now, finally, he saw what the fates had kept from him.

Felicity was the one.  
The blonde hair he held in his fingers like spun gold, was hers.  
The smile that brought him comfort during anguish, was hers.  
The small body beneath him and around him, was hers.

Her palms felt warm against his neck as she held them there while her thumbs grazed his bristled jaw, before she pivoted her hips and drove the tip of his throbbing cock into her cushioned walls, inciting him to move.

He started slow at first, easing out and then thrusting back in, watching as her head tipped and her lips parted. Her throat opened up to him and he didn't hesitate to kiss the warm crimson threads, feeling her pulse quicken beneath her skin. Soon the languid pace was too slow, too restrained, for them both and Thor quickened his pace, pounding into her body until he could feel her moving underneath with each thrust as her grip clenched around his shoulder, voracious nails embedded in skin.

He lifted Felicity at the waist and sat her up so that the top of her back braced against the headboard while a bunched up pillow nestled into her lower back.

With his eyes wide and hungry, Thor tented her legs before he twisted one around his middle and held it in place with his forearm. He drunk in the sight of her; glistening petals of rose-tinted folds that shimmered with both of their arousal in the gauzy light. Her bra pushed down around her waist and her naked breasts lifting with every deep, catch-your-breath breath she took. She was a sight. A perfect sight.

Felicity looked him over with a coy smile, everywhere from the tendrils of blonde hair, saturated and glued to the sides of his face, to the way his tongue absently stroked what was left of her from his lips. His body was a monument to brawn and power yet he hissed, happily, as her leg constricted around his body, strangling him. His long, throbbing cock, coated in her, glossy and slick, came as no surprise to Felicity because she could feel her own hedonistic wetness bleeding into her legs.

She reached for his cock but he intercepted her hand and guided it, instead, to her rigid and hot clit, using her fingers to stimulate her bundle of nerves.  
“I need a minute,” he growled. His whole body was on the cusp of orgasm far sooner than he would like, and instinctively he knew she was a little farther from hers.

He bent down and kissed over the top of her fingers, skating his tongue in between the edges of them. “Faster,” he whispered against her clit and she obeyed without hesitation, but not before moaning at the electricity his voice shook through her body.  
He dipped a finger inside her and then another, adding a third as the tightness had her moaning in pleasure.

His mouth moved to her pert breasts where he delicately traced the outline of her coral nipple, relishing the way it coiled and twisted into a tight knot over his attention. She could feel his cock twitching against her damp thigh while his fingers thrust in and out. While it felt amazing, the gnawing she had in the pit of her core said she wanted, _nay needed_ , more.

His teeth took her hardened nipple, scratching provocatively at the edge and causing Felicity to scream out in pleasure.  
“Please,” she hummed, while her eyes darted open. Her fingers faltered between her folds before Thor moved his hand from her breast to her legs, shadowing her fingers as he roughly and hastily stroked and teased her clit, until she was so close to climax that he could smell it thick in the air, as though he were indescribably attuned to its musky warmth.

His fingers pulled away and hers with them before, almost immediately, he slammed his wickedly massive cock deep inside her, relentlessly thrusting and pressing his base into her scorching clit.

She couldn't see straight, pleasure taking all her senses as her breathing became frantic and uneven while his momentum and rhythm became erratic and rapid, which simply made it even more darkly pleasurable as it stole her voice, but for salacious moans. Her nails scourged his back while her lips devour his in a frantic kiss.

Felicity came for the second time that night in sudden, jerking spasms that coated Thor’s shaft in a blanket of velvety warmth, a sensation that had him coming soon after with ribbons of seed inside her.

Chasing the last few moments of unadulterated pleasure, he kissed her lips, her jaw and her cheek while his thrusts slowed into a steady and rhythmic trace, and her forehead dropped his shoulder.  
He kissed the beads of sweat from her neck and nuzzled the thin, near translucent skin just below her ear before he mouthed his love for her in Nordic; _Ek elska þik._

She was the one.

**| ><|**  
**| |**

Felicity could feel herself breathing as she stared at a spot on the ceiling and condemned herself for not clearing the cobweb near the light fixture which now reflected the beams from the full moon outside the window. The sheet across her chest felt like it anchored her while her legs were pinned, rigid and still, down the bed.

_How could she have been so stupid?_

She daren’t look to the other side of the bed because she knew his expression would probably be something like hers but with a little less mortification and a lot more absolute regret.

Finally the weight shifted off her chest in the same instant that she felt Thor shuffle in the bed beside her. She sat upright and quite nearly gasped for air as she grappled the sheet across her chest.

“I’m so sorry,” she remarked as she kept her eyes affixed straight. “I can’t believe I did that.”  
She felt his presence and heard the rustle of the sheet as he sat up behind her. When he breathed, her skin pickled at the base of her spin from his warm exhale.

She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, how regret undoubtedly coloured his sapphire eyes.  
“Don’t worry, I don’t expect anything and I’m happy to pretend this just didn’t happen.” Her eyes scurried around the floor but in the dim fingers of moonlight she couldn’t find her clothes. “I know I threw myself at you and you were just trying to...,” she paused, unsure what to say until she said the first thing that came into her mind that might fit, “...console me, with your, just, comfort.” Nothing seemed right and she could feel her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Anyway,” she flustered, “it’s fine, it was my mistake, can we just pretend none of this even happened?”

She finally exhaled and it came out like a drawn and frustrated sigh.  
“Are you done?” Thor asked, and the air pushed out with his words misted her spine. She rolled her head in a floppy nod. “Are you going to look at me?”  
Felicity sucked in and pushed out a near-silent groan before she turned her head slowly.  
“I can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” he started as she watched his eyes tracing the lines of her body. “I’m not entirely sure of the customs on Midgard but I don’t think what we did was simply for comfort and you didn’t throw yourself at me, in fact, if I remember correctly _I_ threw _you_ , onto the bed,” he finished with a puckish wink.

“You know what I mean,” she argued as she turned her body a little more towards him, twisting the sheet with her. “You’re yooou,” she sighed, “and I’m just...” another sigh, “...me.”  
“You still don’t see it do you?” he lamented, though his lips started to turn up into a charmingly crooked smile.  
Her eyebrows arched towards her hairline. “See what?”  
Still smiling, Thor dropped his chin to his chest and rocked it back and forth with an airy chuckle. When he finally looked back up, his lips full and parted and his eyes honed on her, she felt the thud of her heart behind her ribs. “I'm in love with you,” he admitted brazenly.

Felicity watched, expecting his mouth to crack into a smirk or his eyes to bounce in jovial laughter. But, neither of those things happened. “What?” she gaped, _she must have heard him wrong, he couldn’t have said..._  
“I love you.” He said it again, undeniable in his conviction. Felicity swallowed the lump in her throat as she lumbered through a blink. “I’ve loved you for years,” he continued. Her jaw dropped and he smiled tenderly as the tip of his finger grazed her cheek. “How did you never know?”

“No you don’t,” Felicity shot back, now blinking wildly.  
He laughed, free from the weight of the aching secret which he had kept so long. “Yes, I do.”  
“Stop it,” she slapped his arm. “You don’t.”  
Thor sat up higher on the heel of his hand. “I do.”  
“No.”  
“Yes,” he bickered. “And are we really arguing about this?”  
She crinkled her lips and her brow followed suit. “So say you don’t.”  
“I’m not going to say that,” he retorted, smiling at the ferocity with which she was arguing this point with him. “I’m not going to say that, because I _do_ love you.”

Silence stole a few moments as she watched him with single-minded focus and he counted the blinks she took; 12.  
“Why?” Felicity finally spoke, her voice faint; barely above a whisper.  
He took her hand and briefly noted how much smaller than his it was, but their fingers slotted together like a perfect puzzle and her entire hand was soon embedded in his palm.  
“You’re everything I’ve wanted,” he admitted warmly. “I’m not your Prince, I’m not Thor son of Odin, God of Thunder, I was just a boy in love with his best friend, and now I’m a man still in love with the woman you became.”  
She blinked, speechless, down at him.  
“On Asgard, we _know_ ,” he whispered as his fingers trickled down her bare arm.  
“We’re not on Asgard,” she breathed.  
He brushed her hand back and smiled. “And yet, I _still_ know.”  
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”  
_Things might have been different._

His eyes sunk into the mattress and a burdened sigh bled from his lips. That was a regret he’d held for many years, slotted behind memories and buried as best he could until his heart drew him here and there was no more denying. “I thought we would have time,” he remarked, a certain sort of sadness making his words bleak because they carried with them the pain of separating kindred spirits, twin flames, destined lovers. “When I realised we wouldn’t, it was too late. You were already gone.”

She kissed his trembling lips with her own quivering ones. She understood his regret, because it mirrored her own.  
“I never thought you could feel that way about me,” she whispered with her eyes closed and their foreheads pressed together. “The way I felt about you.”

With his palms sunken against both of her cheeks, he lifted her head and kissed the corners of her eyes.  
“I wish I could show you how I see you and how much you mean to me,” he said with a soft rasp.  
She blinked up at him with wide and curious eyes as her arms unravelled from around her chest. The sheet she had kept so tightly braced across her body slid, lasciviously, into a pool at her lap as she sucked in a short snip of air.

She peeled one of his large hands from her face and held it to her breast. “Show me,” she whispered, a delicious huskiness to her voice.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

The morning came with a hazy hue of golden yellow that dappled through the room like tiny drops of lights.

“Hi,” Thor remarked, his tone gravelled as his tongue peeked out between his arid lips.  
Felicity chewed absently on the cusp of her lower lip as a streak of scarlet tinted her cheeks. “Hi.” Her eyes fell down the bed where their legs were tangled under the skewed linen. “Do you still feel like you did last night?” she asked, fretful over the idea that the startling brightness of morning might bring the Crown Prince of Asgard some unexpected clarity.

He touched her cheeks where the milky-tone was painted pink. “I will never stop being in love with you,” he vowed before the blush in her cheeks intensified under the honesty of his words. “I’m sorry,” he apologised while his hand still cupped her face. “My words are somewhat forward for earth aren’t they?”

She nodded, only a little, against his palm. “A little,” she whispered before she laid her hand against his. “But I believe them all the same.”  
A smile brightened Thor’s face. “That’s the Asgardian in you,” he teased. “We know.”

The mention of home brought a smile to Felicity’s face, but it lasted only a few moments before it faded with the reality of their different worlds. “You have to go home,” she breathed before her lips kissed the heel of his palm, tremored but warm, “and I can’t go with you.”  
He lifted her head at the chin once more before he decorated her forehead with a cluster of gentle kisses. “We don’t need to worry about that right now,” he assured her and she nodded, slight and hopeful.

“I’m going to go,” she started as she tipped her head towards the bathroom door, “clean up.” Felicity scoured the floor beside the bed for an item of clothing, but found none, before Thor offered her the dark grey Henley he’d worn the night before. With a thankful smile she slipped it over her head and threaded her arms through the loose tee. When she stood up it dropped lazily down one shoulder and skimmed the middle of her silken, alabaster thighs.  
“Perfect fit,” she laughed effervescently as he stretched over the bed, his back a naked landscape of beautifully sculptured brawn.

“Don’t be long,” he growled as he reached his fingertips towards her before she walked away.

**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
Felicity stood in the bathroom, ghosting her fingertips across her collarbone as she smiled at her ravaged body. Her hair was mattered near her ear where hairpins had twisted in the blonde tresses and her lips were swollen and pink.

She tugged down on the neckline of his billowing tee and her smiled lifted a little higher at the sight of red blotches just above her breast, a reminder of a frisky moment shared.

Her eyes trailed slowly down her tingling body and her fingertips followed the curve of her waist before falling away at her thigh. She felt a wave of heat wash over her as she focused on the feeling between her legs. It was deep and rumbling and just a slight echo of an ache that left her wonderfully satisfied.

**| ><|**  
**| |**

Thor was in the kitchen making coffee in nothing more than his underwear and a broad, genuine smile when there was a rapt on the front door. He ignored it the first time, unwilling to let the morning be interrupted, but when it echoed through the studio apartment a second time with a little more haste, he sighed obtusely and sulked towards the door, pulling on a pair of sweat pants on his way.

Just as Thor reached for the handle, a third knock thudded against the door and his irritation at the visitor piqued as he pulled it open.

He was met with a most unwelcomed sight and Gavin’s expression was nearly identical; he hadn’t wanted to see Thor either.

“You,” Thor growled as his fingers gripped the edge of the door, turning his knuckles bone-white.  
“Where’s Felicity?” Gavin asked insolently.  
Thor braced his other hand against the teak doorway and scowled. “Not even a please?”  
He watched Gavin puff up his shoulders and widen his stance before his jaw tensed and the word insufferably snaked from his mouth. “Please.”

Thor leaned his head back and towards one shoulder as his lips twisted into a smirk. “Like you mean it.”  
“Please can you get Felicity for me?” Gavin asked, the torture of each word painfully clear in his expression.  
“No.”

Fed up, Gavin tried to push his way past Thor but, the bulky mortal was no match for the Norse Prince and even with every ounce of strength exerted, he couldn’t budge his nemesis.

Knowing he was beaten in a match of brute strength, Gavin leaned around Thor and yelled Felicity’s name into her apartment.

Holding himself back, Thor barely touched Gavin's chest but the shove was enough to send the mortal stumbling back into the hallway, the commotion pulling Cisco out from behind his door where he had been listening ear to wood.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Gavin boomed after he took a moment to stabilise his footing.  
“Not anymore she’s not,” Thor shot back as he stepped towards him, shoulders raised and chest puffed. “Get out.”  
“You going to make me?” Gavin scoffed.  
Half a second later and Thor had him thrown over his shoulder like a rag doll.

“Oh shit,” Cisco beamed, giddy, as he ran back inside his apartment for his phone. When he return Felicity had appeared, hurriedly dressed in the few moments she had heard the two men arguing from the bathroom, even over the sound of the shower she had started.  
“Downstairs, outside,” Cisco called over his shoulder as he raced down the stairs with Felicity barely three steps behind.

She made it outside as Thor was carrying the thrashing man down the path.  
“Put him down,” she called out after them.  
Thor turned and scrunched up his face but relented when she raised an eyebrow.  
“Felicity I want to talk to you,” Gavin huffed as he ironed out his crumpled clothing and kept one eye on Thor while he skulked around him, towards Felicity.  
“There is nothing we have to say, we’re done, we’re over, go home. Nothing has changed between us since last night and it never will,” she forcefully answered as her body language had her arms crossing over her chest and her body like a wall in front of him.

“Why are you being such a bitch?” he scathed and the instant the last syllable left off his lips, Thor had his fist raised and lined up.  
Until Felicity gently touched his arm. “He's not worth it,” she soothed and his hand, although still clenched, dropped.

Thor turned to her and leaned towards her ear. “It would be so easy,” he whispered, narrowing his eyes to a menacing shape as he watched Gavin swallow nervously.  
“I know, but you could kill him,” Felicity whispered back. He might have been a cheating scum who had taken years from her, but death by demigod was still a no-go.  
“What if I promise to simply maim?”  
A breathy laugh fell from her mouth. “Come on, let’s go back inside,” she encouraged as she turned back towards the apartment.

“Listen to your little woman, you can have my cast offs, stupid cow,” Gavin spat.  
Cisco sucked in air and pushed it out in a drawn “Oooooooohhhhh,” as he kept his camera rolling.  
“You heard that right?” Thor grunted through a clenched jaw.  
“Still not worth it,” Felicity shrugged. They were the childish words of a man who had lost and who was in the process of throwing a tantrum; one she wouldn't dignify with a response.  
“A little,” he pinched his thumb and forefinger around a sphere of air. “I will even cover my eye with my hand and stand on one foot to make it more even,” he pleaded.  
“No,” she chortled.  
“Blindfold me completely?”  
“No.”  
While they were bantering, Gavin ran towards Thor with a fist lined up. He landed the punch squarely on Thor's jaw with a force that had Cisco stuttering swear words. But neither Felicity or, maybe more remarkably to the two Midgardians there, Thor even flinched.

Instead he turned to Felicity and shrugged apologetically before he landed a thump to Gavin's chest that threw him about 5 feet backwards and onto the ground.

Before Gavin could understand how he’d gotten there, Thor picked him up by his shirt and dragged him the rest of the way down the path. He threw the confused Gavin into the front seat of his convertible before Thor gripped both of his hands on the windowless car door, crushing into the metal.  
“If you ever come around here again I won’t pull my punches and I will drop a car on your head without blinking,” Thor warned, slowly and concisely as a dutiful smile lifted his full lips.

When Thor pulled his hands away, there was a deep, crumpled dent where they had been.  
“Who the fuck are you?” Gavin stammered as he tugged the keys from his pocket, nearly dropping them.  
Thor leaned in, still smiling. “The guy you don’t want to fuck with.” He backed away with the same smile.

He stopped near Felicity as Gavin started the car. “Have a nice day,” he waved before the car peeled away from the curb.  
“What did you say to him?” Felicity asked.  
Thor shrugged before he answered with a grin. “That I would drop a car on his head if he came near you again.”  
Cisco laughed as he finished recording.  
“He thinks I’m joking,” Thor jested before Felicity walked back towards the building.

“You are though right?” Cisco remarked as he took a few quick steps to catch up.  
Thor looked over his brawny shoulder and smiled.  
“He is joking right?” Cisco asked again, this time to Felicity.  
But she just smiled too.

“I’m loading this onto YouTube,” Cisco breathed, talking only to himself.

**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
A few lazy hours later found the trio in Felicity's apartment with Cisco channel surfing from the couch and Thor and Felicity absconded in the kitchen under the guise of getting snacks while they stole a few bruising kisses against the fridge.

“Could we date tonight?” he asked with his hands at her waist and his thumbs drawing tiny circles under the hem of her shirt.  
She smiled as she cocked her head towards one shoulder. “You want to go out on a date?”

He nodded, deliberately slow. “I want to go anywhere with you.”

For the second time that day a loud knock echoed through the room and he stepped back from her as Cisco bounded over the back of the couch. “I'll get it.”

There were a few moments of silence, at least from where Thor and Felicity were standing unable to see, before Cisco cleared his throat and looked around the edge of the door.

“Uh, Felicity,” he started with a nervous laugh. “I think you have another cousin visiting.”

Fandral the Dashing strutted in dressed in his green garb with a cloak strung over his shoulder and a sword sheathed at his hip.

“Pardon the intrusion my Prince,” he bowed as he clicked his armoured shoes together. “Thor I must speak with you


	7. ætla | Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the sad lack of update ... I got distracted xox
> 
> Also,,,,like AVENGERS IN LIKE 16 DAYS (it comes out earlier here so like 2 weeks for me 😭)

 

  
**ætla til fundar við - intend to meet one**

When Fandral looked up, he caught sight of Felicity and threads of his serious expression melted away. “Felicity Kuttlerdottir, is that really you?” he greeted her as he scooped up her hand and feathered a soft kiss across the backs of her knuckles.

“Just Felicity here,” she replied softly, blushing at the apples of her cheeks. She hadn’t thought herself all that recognisable, but it would seem she was mistaken, even as his lips lingered there much longer than they needed.  
“You have grown into quite the radiant beauty,” he gushed and Felicity let go of an embarrassed giggle that made her cringe internally.

“She has, _quite_ ,” Thor said gruffly as he slipped his arm around her waist, knotting his fingers into the hip of her oversized shirt. A soft chuckle broke from her lips before she tried to hide it by looking down; Thor he wasn’t been very ambiguous.

Fandral stepped back with a smile and a slight tip of his head; _point taken._

“Your home needs you my Prince,” he said, his voice taking on sudden and dramatically-serious tone.  
Felicity’s eyes tracked instantly to Cisco, who was standing there with his mouth gaped, and his eyes ping-ponging between the three of them.  
“Ah, Cisco, I can hear your phone ringing!” Felicity announced abruptly while Thor shoved his friend into the kitchen; as though removing him from the room might somehow make Cisco forget what he’d already witnessed.

“No, you can’t,” Cisco muttered as a flaccid red vine hung from his fist.  
She started to ferry him towards the door, which Thor moved to open just as they got there. “Yes, I can, there, it’s ringing,” she chatted as she pushed him, unceremoniously, out her front door.

Before Cisco could retort, Felicity closed the door in his face.

“That seemed unnecessarily rough,” Fandral remarked as he brushed himself down while he walked from the kitchen.  
“He doesn’t know,” Felicity said softly as she leaned against the front door and sighed.  
Fandral laughed as he looked Thor up and down and then shrugged. “Midgardians,” he remarked cynically. “As I was saying, my Prince, you must return to Asgard.”  
“Did my father send you?” Thor asked huskily as he sulked over to the window, his large frame blocking out most of the sunlight that had been streaming in through it.

Fandral hummed as his shoulders wavered in a shrug. “Not exactly,” he finally answered, “but all the same.”  
Thor turned and shook his head through a chuckle. “Return alone. My place is here.”  
“Your father means to give your brother the throne.”  
Despite his best endeavours to hide it, Thor’s shoulders stiffened and his jaw tightened. “It is his to give to whom he feels worthy,” he gritted out between clenched teeth before he turned back to the window.

“Why?” Felicity asked as she pushed herself off from the door. She had been away from Asgard for some time, but what Fandral was saying made no sense. The Allfather might have been a bull headed ancient; but he was a stickler for the rules, and the second son was not the one groomed for the throne.

“That is what we can’t figure out,” he voice grew quiet, until it was nearly a whisper, “perhaps there is more to this.” He looked towards Thor, his body stooped and his eyes pleading with the Prince. “Asgard needs you Thor.”

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“Where’s your other cousin?” Cisco asked as he opened his door to a sheepish Felicity, and Thor hovering behind her.  
“Watching Netflix and eating tater tots,” Felicity answered with a puckish smile, the fine creases of her eyes begging for forgiveness for the uncourteous way she'd excommunicated him from her apartment. “Can we talk?”

He huffed but stepped back from the door, opening it wider for Thor's sheer size. “I guess you have questions?” Felicity hummed as her feet idly drew shapes on his rug.  
“Will any of them get a real answer?” he put back to her.

Her shoulders slumped forward as she struggled for a semblance of a way to tell him the truth without seeming like a complete nutter.

She saw the notes on his wall and wordlessly she positioned herself in front of them, casting a considered eye over the cache before she plucked the white push pins from the corkboard and collected the notes on seven of the nine realms; which Cisco had spent countless hours pouring over.

“What the heck? That's years of...,” Cisco bleated as he ran towards her.  
Thor stopped him with a kind but firm hand to his chest. “Just watch.”

Felicity placed Midgard, Earth, in the centre and arranged three of the others around it, Asgard above it, with Vanaheim and Alfheim curving like a downward arch to the left. She then mirrored that on the right side with a torn sheet of blank paper, on which she wrote _Svartalfheim_ , and Jotunheim. Beneath Midgard, Felicity tacked Niflheim, and Nidavellir to its left. Finally, she tore another square of paper from the loose-leaf pad and wrote _Muspelheim_ which sat to the right.

Tapping the blue ballpoint to her lips she lined all the realms up with her eyes then plucked a black marker from his desk and drew the outline of a tree around the realms, with Midgard as the bridge between the trunk and the crown.

She stepped back to check her work, before she smiled and gave a short nod. “Now it's right.”  
Cisco shook his head slowly. “I don't understand.”  
“Midgard, Earth, home to the mortals,” Felicity explained and Cisco nodded along with her as Thor's hand drifted away and allowed the smaller man a few steps closer. “This is where you come from,” she continued as her finger slowly moved upwards. “Asgard, home to the Asgardians. Often called gods, and revered as such.” She turned her head slowly to look at her friend, his eyes blinking wildly. “This is where I’m from.” She tapped her finger against the word before she looked back at Thor.  
“Where _we’re_ from,” Thor corrected.  
“You're...you are...,” Cisco’s jaw fell open and his eyes shot madly around the room. “But, you, here, and, he, uh,” he continued in stunted breaths.

“To be fair, I’m only half,” Felicity remarked while one shoulder lifted in a slight shrug. “My mother was from Earth.”  
“So you’re,” Cisco mumbled as he pointed a shaky finger at Asgard.  
“Half,” Felicity answered.  
“And that makes him?” he turned his attention to Thor who was wearing a wide-brimming smile.  
“This guy,” he chuckled pointing to the picture of Thor, “but with better hair. This is wholly inaccurate.”

Cisco gulped.  
And then he fainted.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“Did I just?” Cisco groaned as he found himself on the couch.  
“You fainted,” Felicity spoke softly as she handed him a glass of water.  
“Like a ragdoll,” Thor laughed. Felicity whacked his arm and narrowed her eyes at him. Thor cleared his throat and quickly added, “A manly ragdoll.”  
“Low blood sugar,” Cisco retorted, his voice deepening in tone.  
“Mmmhmm,” Felicity hummed graciously, she’d let him have this one.

“Of course I knew that he was, uh, a God.”  
“No you didn’t,” Felicity jested.  
“Also not technically a God, although you do like to call us that,” Thor pointed out with an affectionate smirk.  
Cisco ignored him. “I was just waiting for you to tell me yourself.”  
“Really?” Felicity replied as she tried to hold back a smile.  
“Sure,” Cisco scoffed, “I mean what kind of name is Thormas? And he carries around a hammer. Of course I knew, I was just being cool.”  
“Were you though? Because you just fainted,” Thor pointed out, his smirk growing even wider.  
“Low blood sugar,” Cisco reiterated, with an added gritting of his teeth as he ran his fingers through his mop of hair before he sat up and changed the subject. “How have you been around so long?”

Thor shrugged his brawny shoulders, there were many things Midgardians couldn’t comprehend and this was one of those things. “Others have come before me, and others will come after me,” he answered succinctly, though the quizzical look on Cisco’s face remained.  
“After you? Aren’t you immortal?”  
“No, we’re just like you, give or take a few thousand years.”  
“Asgardians age much like humans to a point. Once they reach a certain age, they will stop aging the same and where you would have 90 years, they would have a few thousand,” Felicity explained as best as she could.  
“So I would age, but you would stop?” Cisco asked, turning his body on the couch to look at Felicity.  
“If I stayed on earth, no, I would live like you. But even if I was to live on Asgard there would be no surety that I would age as them,” she dropped her head towards her shoulder, “I’m only half, remember,” she said softly, the words an echo of the many times she’d heard them in her youth.

“One picks a path at that age that will determine their life from then on,” Thor added while he kept his eyes on Felicity.  
The words remained unspoken between them; but if they chose different paths the two of them would be separated by time; indefinitely.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

  
“So are you invincible?” Cisco asked Fandral as he tipped the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos towards him.  
With his eyes tacked to a rerun of _Friends_ , Fandral dove his hand into the bag and came up with a fistful of the maize treat.  
“Pretty much,” he remarked before he fed three chips into his mouth, humming his approval as he chewed.  
“Not entirely,” Thor argued from Cisco's kitchen.  
Fandral scoffed with a haughty laugh.

“What about bullets? What would happen if I shot you?” Cisco quizzed.  
Fandral thought about the question for a moment before he posed his own. “What am I wearing?”  
“Why does that matter?”  
“Am I wearing my armour or am I naked?” Fandral countered before he licked his fingers clean of flavouring.  
“Why would you be naked in this scenario?” Cisco asked with a curious crinkle across his brow.  
Fandral laughed from his chest before he raked his fingers through his luscious mane. “You'd be surprised.”

Thor laughed from behind them before he went back to pacing the two tone tiles of Cisco's kitchen.

“You're wearing your clothes,” Cisco clarified as he offered the packet again.  
“That's easy, I'd be fine because you'd never hit me. I'm too good.” The warrior sat back with his feet on Cisco's coffee table and smiled broadly before he took another handful of chips.

“How come you don't look like him?” Cisco asked before he nodded towards where Thor was wearing down the polish on the tiles.  
“Well that's offensive,” Fandral balked before he turned back to the TV just as a manic Brad Pitt appeared. “Why don't you look like him?”  
“Point taken,” Cisco admitted as he shrunk back into his half of the couch.

When a few minutes had passed in relative silence but for the laugh track on the TV, Cisco spoke up again. “How do you guys get here?”  
“It’s something of a bridge,” Thor replied as he stopped pacing and walked into the living room to garner a better view at the clock. Felicity had been gone going on an hour and while they hadn’t made plans to meet up for another 20 minutes, the time was weighing heavily on him. He wanted to see her, to get off his chest everything he was thinking and feeling.

“I knew it!” Cisco cheered as he jumped off the couch and danced around in a circle, much to Fandral’s amusement. “Can you travel to other realms?” Cisco asked once he’d made himself dizzy.  
“We can travel anywhere. Felicity would call it a Space…” Thor paused when the door to Cisco’s apartment opened, “Uber,” he finished, mumbling.

Felicity smiled softly as she ran her palms down the sides of the little yellow dress she was wearing. The bodice was form-fitting and clinched at the waist while the skirt was full and flowing to the knees. Her hair was in soft, natural curls that she had pulled back into a ponytail with wisps of loose hair framing her porcelain face.

“I hope this is okay?” she spoke quietly as Thor stopped, transfixed, just in front of her. “I didn’t really know where we were going.”  
Felicity folded her lips together, reining in the smile that threatened to expose her bubbling nerves just below the surface. She had stood outside Cisco’s door for far longer than she needed to, staring at the grain in the wood and the slight speckle of tarnish in the door number as she tried, somewhat fruitlessly, to settle the butterflies doing somersaults in her stomach.

Realistically she had nothing to be nervous about, given in part because of what the two of them had done the night before. He had seen every inch of her, touched it with his fingers and his mouth, unravelled her like no man before had ever. And she knew him as her best friend from a time before, long ago but never forgotten; she knew the boy that had helped her reach books from high shelves, or the boy that had carried her all the way home. She knew him now as both a lover and a friend, she had no reason to be a bundle of electric nerves.

And yet, there she was, on the precipice of babbling out some nervous remark about how utterly delicious he looked, or admitting that she would quite like to peel off his princely robes if given the chance to (a secret she thought best to keep to herself, at least for now).

Maybe it was because now it was real.  
One could argue that last night was hormones and desires, all insatiable, but today with clear heads and clothes on, they were trying something new; A date.

Thor leaned in and brushed a tender kiss near her lobe. “You look perfect,” he whispered as the floral notes of her perfume embedded in his memories.  
“Should we call a taxi?” she asked with her fingers instinctively skating up his arm and over his tight white Henley.  
He stepped back and Felicity saw the grin he was wearing. “I have another idea,” he announced as he stretched out his arm and opened his hand. Mjölnir lifted off the coffee table and shot across the living room and into Thor’s waiting hand.

“Holy shit, it can do that?!” Cisco screamed as he jumped, both feet, onto the seat of the couch.  
Fandral took the Doritos and helped himself as he chuckled gingerly.  
“It can do a lot more than that,” Thor answered with a wink.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

A short drive later and the four of them were standing in the dilapidated courtyard of an abandoned industrial building. Thor jostled the knapsack on his broad shoulder before he scooped his arm around Felicity’s waist, pulling her tight against his body and making a puff of air escape like a sigh through her rosy lips.

“Watch this,” Fandral cheered as he took three steps backwards.  
Cisco mirrored him and squinted, unsure what exactly was about to happen.

“Do you trust me?” Thor asked softly, his voice carrying like a serenade to her ear.  
“Always,” she answered without hesitation.  
“Hold on to me tight.”  
She nodded her head, just the one, soft nod, before she gripped one hand around his waist, and the other across his chest and curving her fingers around his neck.

He raised Mjölnir and in a flash of light the two of them were gone; leaving Cisco screaming excitedly.  
“What was that, WHAT was THAT?” he bleated as he ran around the intricate design burned into the dust on the ground.  
“That was magic,” Fandral chanted before he tipped the crumbs of the chip packet into his mouth. “Now, where do we get more of these?”  
“Uh,” Cisco replied while he blinked wildly, “Costco.”  
Fandral clapped his hands together impatiently. “Let’s go then.”  
“Can, can, you do that?” Cisco mumbled as his eyes searched the cloudy sky above him.  
“Well no,” Fandral remarked with a shrug, “but to be fair, that’s the hammer, not him.”

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
They set down in a mossy forest, where the earthy scent of ancient trees wove their way through Felicity’s senses. The light was new and dappled on the forest floor with a lush canopy of green above them. The ground spilled out into a clearing a few feet away and a glistening pool of glassy water sat beyond that, with waterfall curtain a short swim away.

“Are we still on earth?” Felicity asked as she brushed back her hair and took a well-overdue gasp of air.  
“We are,” he smiled, watching her as she took in the breath-taking sights.  
Birds chortled from the tree tops and the distant churning water echoed all around, signalling just how alone and isolated they truly were. “Where are we?” she asked, awestruck as she looked around the paradisiac surroundings. “It’s beautiful.”  
“It’s beautiful from where I’m standing too,” Thor replied as he shrugged the bag off his shoulders and studied the soft bow of Felicity’s smiling lips.  
Her fingertips grazed the bark of a nearby tree as her eyes lolled closed, feeling the cool and gentle sway of a breeze pass her by. “This reminds me of…,” she paused just shy of saying the word she had forbid herself from saying for so long.

His arm enveloped her waist and she melted back against the plank of his chest. He kissed her neck, just behind her ear, and nuzzled his nose against her tepid skin. “Home?” he whispered.  
With her hands brushing down the arm that held her, Felicity nodded. It reminded her of home; _Asgard_.

They stayed, speechless, for a few moments more; letting the beauty wash over them. “Do you think I should return?” he asked softly, his voice frail at the edges and warm against her skin.  
“Earth isn’t your home,” she answered him, her tone matching his.  
“But you are.”  
She turned in his arm and soothed her open palm down his jaw, relishing the way a peace set over his expression.  
“If you choose to stay on earth, then I choose to stay with you,” he whispered, his eyes softly closed; long, dark lashes splayed across his chiselled cheeks.  
“And give it all up?” she asked while her thumb stroked through his bristled jaw.  
“I would trade the world for you.”

As the last word left his mouth, Felicity lifted herself against him and he brought his lips down to hers for a long, passionate kiss.

They split and Felicity took a step back, making his hands fall from her waist. She twisted her arms behind her back and tugged down the tag of the small zipper. As her dressed opened, her skin shivered with prickles before it fell like yellow petals around her feet.

He remained wordless, but his broad, happy, and eager smile said all Felicity needed to know. She took off her ivory lingerie and bundled them onto her dress before she tiptoed slowly backwards.

The first slap of the water as her toes dipped in made Felicity gasp, but his heated gaze kept her focused as she walked carefully a few more steps before she turned away from him.

The water was brisk and as it lapped near her knees she felt a tingling up her spine; but it was only a few moments until the sting subsided. With one last look over her lean shoulder, Felicity moved deeper through the water, dragging just the tip of her fingers along to make ripples in the still lagoon.

He kept his eyes on her, tracking her with a lopsided smile as she paused near a smooth boulder that broke up from the shimmering water like an island.

She treaded water with her willowy arms while the crystal water lapped against her alabaster breasts. Time slowed and aromas teased his senses while he simply watched her, enslaved. _Happily_.

“Are you coming in?” Felicity asked before her tongue rolled slowly across her lips.  
He answered her without words, but rather with an impish smile as he stripped off his clothes, piece by piece.

Felicity took the show in with a growling hunger rumbling through her core. Her fingers knotted in the water as each item dropped to the ground. There was no denying that the man in front of her looked like he was carved out of marble by the hands of a god, which wasn't exactly far from the truth. She hadn't had the time to enjoy it the first time, it had been more of a flurry than a meander, so she took in every inch of him with a carnivorous stare.

He waded into the water, every inch of him moulded perfectly and flawless. Her eyes were drawn to his manhood, a semi hard rod woven with veins she swore she could see pulsing from that distance and a thatch of sandy hair at his base. She found herself visibly gulping at his virility as an ache throbbed down her core and through her thighs. _No wonder she had felt so completely full last night._

Before she could study it much longer, it had dipped beneath the mirrored water. Drips of water beaded across his chest, traveling the valleys in slow declines as he walked closer. As one more aroused hum bled from her swollen lips, Felicity reached out and touched the deep crevice between his taut pecs.

She shivered and his hands instantly cupped her shoulders. “Are you cold?” he worried.  
Felicity gently shook her head, the shiver had started between her thighs and had nothing to do with the water lapping against their naked bodies.

He kissed her bruising and deep before he left the kiss achingly incomplete. “Tell me what you want my Queen,” he whispered as he leaned closer and dragged his lips up the slope of her neck.

She answered with a tiny sigh before he dipped one hand beneath the surface. Weightlessly he lifted her leg and guided it around his waist, skimming the inside of her thigh against his shaft.

His fingers passed slowly over her warmed bud, causing a trail of frigid water to pass delectably through her sweltering folds. Felicity hissed as her head snapped back. But he coaxed it back down with a path of heated kisses against the blushed-red threads of her throat.

“Look at me,” he breathily spoke, pulling her eyes downwards with his raspy voice.  
Their eyes locked, their breaths shared. The currents of the water passed lazily between them as the tip of his cock tingled unbearably; swollen and throbbing.

Her graceful arms curled over his shoulders; fingers entwining playfully in wet strands of hair. He smiled, crooked and charming, as a calloused but gentle finger passed through her, circling her tight nub as pleasure danced in her eyes.

She twisted his hair tighter, making him gasp, but without causing his smile to falter. He slid a digit inside her, groaning as her body clamped around him and sucked him deeper.

Flutters, like tiny licks, caressed his finger as he began to move it, gliding it against her cushioned walls, while his thumb toyed with her clit. With each stroke her leg grew tighter around his waist and her fingers coiled closer to his scalp.

“I will love you forever,” he admitted, unashamed of the intimacy with which he spoke, but rather grateful for the sunny smile his words elicited.  
Her thumb brushed through his scruff, sending a mist of tiny droplets scattering. “And I you,” she replied, barely above a whisper, but carried on still air.

She bucked against his finger as her teeth chewed the line of her lower lip. Taking her spurring, Thor sunk a second finger inside her. She was warm, and wet, and thrumming as he settled to the last knuckle.

She moved and he twisted. She moaned and he thrust. Both of them playing off the other until they were churning the water around them into whorls. A kiss, frantic and somewhat haphazard, before she begged him inside her with a wanton moan and a breathy slither of his name.

He answered her nearly immediately, replacing his sodden digits with his long cock, ribbed and rigid passing against her sensitive edges.

Wisps of her hair danced her slender shoulders like a stage as he lifted her up, settling himself as far as he could. Her eyes were wide, mesmerizingly so, and he knew it was due to the fullness she felt by him. He didn’t move. Resisting the animalistic urge to pull out and thrust deep. But he waited, buried in her warm passage, feeling the flickers of her twitching walls, until her face softened and her pelvis tipped, edging him, only a fraction, deeper. But setting him off all the same.

Her breasts rose from the water with the first thrust, tight, rose-red nipples he couldn’t help but nip his lips at. He held her waist, tight, and she gripped him at the shoulders; nails digging into flesh.

He drove himself in harder, savouring her unearthly cries. Again and again he thrust; tight walls milking the knot at his tip. He paused, half retreated and she bounced back down; swirling waves of their own making which slapped against their naked bodies.

The root of Thor’s cock ached to be released, but he held on, clenching his ass in the chilly water, until her climax came with a shuddering of wetness down his shaft. Her head swayed, her eyes lolled and then he kissed her, wet and warm and unhurried, while his seed filled her, ribbons and ribbons, deep inside her pulsing core.

They didn't speak, letting their tongues swirling around each other say all the words they needed to, until her leg floated down from around him and he held her, ever so slightly above him.  
“Perfect,” he smiled.  
And she smiled back.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Lying together naked under a green tartan blanket, Thor held Felicity tight against his chest while she watched the same rise and fall with each breath he took. Gently he trickled his fingers down her arm as they both listened to the deep sounds of the forest.

“Do you remember the stories of how the Gods found love?” he asked, his eyes skyward.  
“Of fates and lives before,” Felicity commented, recounting the stories they were told as children. “ætla til fundar við.” It had felt like ions since she let Asgardian language fall from her lips; a bygone era where she had once tried to be more than she was.

He turned his head towards her and she smiled kindly up at him. “You are my fate Felicity,” he breathed, taking every second he spent with her cradled next to him. “I have loved you from a time before I knew what that was.”

She understood him; knowing she felt the same.

Thor took her hand and placed it against the convex of his chest, over his heart. “This has searched for you since its first beat and it will love you until its last.”  
Their fingers entwined and she felt a small jolt pass from his palm to her own. “I make an oath to you, Felicity Smoak, I am bound to you in this life and the one beyond.”

Lightly she feathered her lips across the backs of his knuckles, breathing her warm breath against them. The words he uttered were an oath spoken in times and eras before engagements; a promise not given, or taken, lightly.

But her answer felt like the simplest one to give. “I make an oath to you, Thor Odinson, I am bound to you in this life and the one beyond.”

As the last word left her lips it felt like a hazy veil had been lifted from their eyes. As though they had both known this day would come, but were only now graced by the true light of it.

“Go home to Asgard, talk with Allfather” she whispered, her voice thin, almost hoarse.  
His brows furrowed and his mouth opened to retort, but she hushed him with a gentle tap. “I will go with you, then we'll make a decision.”  
The furrowed brow lifted, startled but happily so.  
“You’ll return with me?” he repeated, nearly out of breath.  
“I am with you,” she hummed, brushing her fingertips up his neck.

In this life and the one beyond.


	8. bróðir | brother

His lips nestled against hers, warm and smiling, while his long fingers brushed through her tumble of blonde hair as it cascaded down her back. She sighed against his body, safe in the knowledge that the large hand that sat settled at the small of her back would hold her as her knees swayed beneath her.

“We could just go into your apartment,” Thor whispered, his bristled mouth grazing Felicity’s swollen lips. “Pretend we haven’t come home yet.”  
She whimpered out a breathy hum as he dragged his lips down her throat and across to her ear. “I can kiss you here, like you like,” he remarked, husky but almost unheard, as he pressed a tepid kiss just below her ear lobe. The hand on her back slid a few inches downwards, falling over her rear, “or kiss you in that other place you like.” He growled and the reverberations in her ear quivered down her spine.

She folded her lips together to hush the decadent purr that was radiating from inside her chest while his fingers crept closer to the centre of her ass.  
“Would you like that?” he asked before his tongue drew a faint line down her neck.  
Her blue eyes were blown wide and she knew her breathing was sporadic and uneven. They stood on a figurative bridge between Cisco’s apartment and her own; and they could go either way. Her eyes darted from the shadowy recess of Cisco’s door to the nearly-glowing one of her own, as Thor’s tongue tantalised her sense and his fingers danced across strings of her arousal.

“My apa-.”  
She swallowed the half spoken word the instant Cisco’s door flung open, and with an unceremonious shove she pushed Thor off her.

He laughed, surprised by her strength as he brushed his sizable palms down the front of his shirt.  
“Cisco, impeccable timing,” he gruffly laughed before he noted the flustered shade of red Felicity’s cheeks had turned.

“You know this is a public space right?” Cisco teased as he ran a frantic hand through his mop of black hair. “Anyway, don’t care,” he remarked just as Thor was opening his mouth to reply. “Glad you’re back. Problem. Inside.”  
“You’re talking in fragmented sentences,” Felicity remarked as she tried to discretely press her thighs together in an effort to dampen down her the embers of arousal there.  
“Your,” Cisco shot his finger and then shook his head. “Cousins.”

Before Felicity and Thor could decipher what Cisco meant the hall flooded with their answer.

“THOR!” Volstagg (the Valiant) announced, so loudly that his deep voice echoed off every surface around them.  
Hogun (the Grimm) followed behind with a cloak of black bear hide shrouding his arms. His face was pensive and his eyes only briefly made contact with Felicity; enough that he seemed to recognise her all the same.

But it was the third new face that made Felicity take a step back and pushed the air from her lungs; tall and with a figure that looked both strong and regal, with raven hair and almond eyes, was Lady Sabine; a mesmerising encapsulation of a true-Asgardian woman.

And instantly, Felicity was an awkward 12 year old once again.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

The sun was setting and casting a radiant orange glow through the high, latticed windows of the still library. Her own footsteps echoed as Felicity walked, slow and measured, down aisle after aisle of floor to ceiling shelves. The air was heavy and speckled with dust from each book she carefully moved when she found one out of place; but she minded neither.

Nor did the quiet 12 year old mind the solitude of the castle library at dusk. In fact, if she could choose any place to be it would be there amidst the ancient texts and modern readings of the world that lay beyond the edge of Asgard.

As well as giving her time alone with her thoughts, the stone walls and marbled floor gave her a recluse from the tiresome burden of always having to be something, or someone, more than she was.

For those precious moments her lineage didn’t matter and neither did her willowy stature. The books didn’t care that she came from two worlds and the table in the corner where she would pour over the writings of the greats – from Asgard and afar, never judged her curious mind or sullied her thoughts of seeing everything in the great beyond.

It was the idle dreams of a child; and even at her age Felicity knew that. Warriors travelled between realms, not scholars and certainly not half-bred scholars. They rattled around empty palace halls and hid themselves away in rows of dusty book shelves.

Her eyes narrowed on a book near the top shelf, at least another whole of her height above her. She craned her neck to read the spine and her loud huff at seeing it was definitely in the wrong place echoed up into the cavernous ceiling.

She searched the other rows for the ladder but she found it, broken, and laying off its tracks on the floor – the same place it had been the week before.

“You’d think no one ever uses this place,” she grumbled to herself, and then laughed when she realised the absolute truth in that – the clear sediment of dust around the place attested to it.

She picked up a sturdy red-oak chair and carried it over to the spot. She positioned it carefully underneath the offending book, but when she clambered onto it, she wasn’t even slightly close to being able to reach it; even on her tippy toes.

She groaned loudly and listened to it echo.

“I could help,” a melodic voice said from behind her.  
Felicity, caught completely unawares, stumbled and very nearly fell off the chair, just barely managing to hook her toes around the edge and keep herself upright.  
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the girl said again and when Felicity turned her head sharply she found the worried – and stupidly-flawless – face of Lady Sabine.

She felt her jaw tense and the sound of her back teeth grinding against each other also seemed to echo around the hollow room.

The slightly older beauty with her silken tresses and her full, rosy lips, smiled at Felicity and offered her a hand, which Felicity wordless rejected as she jumped down off the chair without help.

Sabine knotted her fingers together in front of her svelte waist and smiled gently at Felicity. The daughter of two noble Asgardians, was almost 15 and seemed to be aging like a graceful beauty, while Felicity barely grew an inch in the last 10 months and had absolutely no beginnings of a chest.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Felicity said, rather harshly, but she wasn’t prepared to take it back; after all it was bad enough that Lady Sabine always seemed to find Felicity and Thor after lessons, or sit with them during feasts, but now – _now_! – she was even invading Felicity’s private sanctum.

_Okay, it wasn’t exactly hers, but no one else went there, so it might as well be._

“Would you like me to…?” Sabine started as she reached for the book Felicity had been trying to reach.  
“Nope, it’s fine, thank you,” Felicity said with gritted teeth.  
Sabine retracted her hand and wrapped it delicately around her core. “Do you come here often?” she asked, her wide eyes fluttering long-thick lashes against porcelain cheeks.

Felicity rolled her eyes; _Thor wasn’t even here, who in all the realms did she think she was fluttering them at?_

“The library?” Felicity asked dryly.  
“It’s a lovely place,” Sabine sighed as her eyes looked up towards the ceiling beams.  
Felicity’s toes dug into her shoes as she folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t know what Sabine was trying to play at; but whatever it was she was in no mind to participate.

The book out of order would have to wait.  
“I should get going. Enjoy the library,” Felicity remarked, an unmissable bite at the tip of her words, before she walked past the other girl and left.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

“You must return home, Thor, and take back the throne,” Hogun urged, his voice brusque but pleading.  
Thor shook a hand through his locks as he paced a circle on Cisco’s living room floor.  
“Your father lies in Odinsleep and your brother sits upon his throne,” Volstagg grumbled; his voice naturally deep that it sat heavy in the air. “ _Your_ throne,” he added curtly.

Still, Thor just paced.  
“He has opened the bridge, and speaks of joining realms with the dark elves. We left by the skin out our teeth to bring you back before he tears Asgard apart.”  
Finally, Thor stopped walking. His brow was heavy and his eyes turbulent. “What of my mother?”  
“Confined to her chambers my lord, but safe,” Lady Sabine spoke up, the softness in her voice making Felicity’s chest clench as she sat, quietly hunched, on the couch; afraid that if they noticed her there they might ask her to leave – _she was only a half._

“And what of Felicity’s father?” Thor asked and Felicity looked up, meeting his striking eyes with her own. He graced her with a soft smile; he must have known how her heart ached to know of her father’s fate.

It was Hogun that answered, and he directed it to Felicity, his brown eyes dropping as his head bowed. “He is the one that helped us out of Asgard and told us where to find you. I do not know of his fate,” he spoke, his voice nearly a whisper.  
Felicity gasped, a strangled sob coming from her chest as her arms tightened around her waist.  
“Loki will be expecting us, we can’t very well walk through the front gates,” Thor remarked as he lay a gentle hand on Felicity’s shoulder, and stroked absent circles with his thumb.  
“We have a way back, but we must leave now. We have already spent too long away.” Volstagg declared as he lifted his battle axe and swung it over his broad shoulder.

Felicity stood up, “Let’s go then.”  
Again, it was Hogun who spoke. “Your father asked that you stay on Midgard where it’s safe.”  
Felicity looked at Thor who wore a pensive brow. “Well we’re not listening to him, are we?” she quipped.  
“He said you’d say that,” Volstagg added with a husky laugh.  
Thor held Felicity just above the elbow and pulled her aside, into the far corner of Cisco’s living room. “I need you to be safe,” he said softly, stopping his body so their eyes aligned.  
“I will be,” she retorted.  
He shook his head sadly as his hand sunk around her cheek, almost swallowing her face. “My brother is neither rash nor impulsive. I fear we do not know the extent of his plan and I can’t have you in danger.” A soft, almost coy smile, lifted his lips lopsided. “And how am I to ask your father’s blessing to marry you if we disregard this request of his?”  
Her cheeks pinked and warmed as a smile danced into her eyes. “I meant what I said Felicity, I am bound to you in this life and the next; I will come back for you.”

  
Her smile faded when she glanced upwards and the heaviness in her heart made her expel a worried sigh. “My father,” she started, her voice a trebled whisper, “I worry about him.”  
Thor held her head tightly between his two palms. “I will protect him as though he were my own flesh and blood.”  
A grateful smile shivered, unsteady, over her lips as she brought her hand up to his face and gently brushed her fingers down his jaw. “And who will protect you?”

He leaned down and captured her lips with his own, letting them sit there, gently folded around each other, stealing the few precious moments they had. “I will come back for you,” he promised with his lips brushing the words against hers and their forehead pressed together.  
“Come back to me,” she breathed as a single tear slid from her eye.

And then it was time for him to go.

Standing in an open field a stone’s throw from the back of Felicity’s apartment building as the air grew chilly around them, Thor gave her one last kiss and, while she wasn’t listening, he made Cisco promise to keep an eye on her.

The portal her father had set up would only allow three back at a time and in case they landed right in the middle of a skirmish, Thor, Hogun and Volstagg would go first. Lady Sabine and Fandral would follow shortly after.

Thor bid her one last smile and she offered him a very shaky one in return; and then he was gone.

Fandral stood at a distance with Cisco, trying to strap packets of Doritos to his body, as Felicity kicked the grass at her feet while she tried to keep her tears damned behind her glassy eyes.

“I am glad that he found you,” Sabine said softly as they played out their time until the next portal; only a matter of minutes. “Those fated together should never be kept apart as long as you were.”  
Felicity looked up, a part of her expecting a thin and insincere smile, but she found quite the opposite. “But you and he...” Felicity breathed, her voice tapering off at the edge, perhaps unwilling to commit to the words out loud; that Lady Sabine and Thor would have been the prom king and queen if Asgard had proms.

“Thor and I?” an unexpected and exuberant laugh bubbled forth before it settled into a chuckle. “You cannot love a man whose heart belongs to another. He has always loved you.” She said it with such surety and clarity that Felicity almost felt embarrassed for her lack of both those things. At least up until a few days ago.

“But the two of you seemed so close,” she stumbled, rolling over the times she had seen them absconded, alone, _together_. She hadn’t imagined all of that.  
“When he needed to ask a girl's opinion on something about you,” she explained, a half smile hooking up her lips. “And of course I would help him make you smile, and,” her voice softened, “sometimes I would allow myself to think things might be different.”  
Felicity’s brow arched. “That you might be with him?”  
Her question was left up in the air as Fandral approached. “It's time,” he said, his body rustled while he moved. He stood where the others had stood a minute before.

“Him? No.” Sabine remarked coyly. “You?” she smiled, “Well, you are quite enchanting Felicity.”  
“Wait, me?” Felicity taped. “You were flirting with me?”  
The tall brunette with sun-kissed cheeks smiled. “Looks like I’m not as good at it as I once thought.”

She stepped away from a speechless Felicity.  
“He will come back for you,” she offered warmly. “He'd be an idiot not to.”

A second later and they were both gone too.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Thor found himself in the midst of chaos as he touched down at the cusp of the rainbow bridge, an amassed army that Felicity's father had called to defend Asgard against the tidal wave of approaching dark elves.

The air was thick with a chorus of war as Thor held back those willing to risk their lives in mutiny of Loki. Enemy ships broke through the horizon while the blinding beacon of violent, but brilliant white, of the Bifröst opened a tumultuous rift between the realms.

“What does my brother mean to do?” Thor asked as Mjölnir spun in his hands while he prepared himself.  
“An invasion under the guise of a treaty,” Felicity’s father replied, his eyes weary and his hand shaking around the hilt of a polished silver sword. “I fear Asgard will not be where it stops.”

He glanced at Thor, his pale blue eyes turbulent with thoughts he didn't need to verbalize. Midgard was under his protection and it was now under Thor's sworn oath.

“But it will be where we stop him,” Thor announced resolutely.

The thunderous clap from the heavens above as a stormy cloud of lightning made a funnel above him mixed with the rumble of the approaching army of the raised.

The dark elves had summoned those fallen and barred from Valhalla and the rattle of battle armour strung from the bones of the undead sent a shiver down Thor's spine. Those already dead did not fear death.

“If the Bifröst stays open much longer it will tear this realm and all others apart before Loki takes the throne.”  
“What must be done?” Thor asked, power crackling in his fingertips.  
“Close it.” He looked at the man’s narrowed eyes, coloured with a determination that Thor had seen Felicity wear too. “Any way you can my Prince.”

“Brothers,” Thor called and a loud cheer behind him rung out. “Clear me a path.”

The feet of a thousand running together was lost behind the thunderous sound of their battle cry that rushed like a cloud above them before both armies collided like two waves breaking against each other, in the midst of the rainbow bridge.

Loki stood behind his army, draped in his green cloak with the long arching horns of his helmet reflecting the light.

Thor ploughed through the relentless tidal wave until the bridge was thick with them.

“Go, we have this,” Fandral called as his blade severed the heads of three in a row, all falling to a pile of dust and bones at his feet.

Lightning cracked above Thor as he spun Mjölnir in tight circles until only a hazy blur could be seen. With a crackle of veiny lightning that struck down those around him, Thor lifted high into the air and flew across the blockade in a single leap.

With sweat beading down his temples and his hair wet with the same, Thor touched down with a thud a few steps behind his brother at the entrance of Heimdall's Observatory.

The Bifröst was spinning out spindles of power above them as branches of light spilled down to the floor. The chamber shook as the centre began to collapse into itself.

“What have you done brother?” Thor pleaded as the ground shook at his feet and the heavens split above him.  
“Something that both you and your father were too scared to. We were Gods,” Loki called out as he raised his sceptre to the splitting fabric of space above them. “With the Døkkálfar at our side and me on the throne we will be Gods again.” The end of his sceptre smashed into the floor with a deafening and hollow echo. “I am the worthy ruler. True heir to the throne. I will make the world know Asgard once again.”

“By killing countless people?” Thor's shoulders hung heavy with his own guilt that it hadn't been so long since his own arrogance to start a war had seen him leave Asgard.

“What is this new found love for people? How many could you kill with your bare hands,” Loki sniggered as he sunk closer to his brother.  
“I’ve changed,” Thor replied his hand twisting around Mjölnir’s handle.

Loki smirked, menacing and thin. “So have I.” His sceptre struck Thor's face across the cheek, whipping his head to the side and drawing a trail of blood. “Now fight me!”

The second strike knocked Thor back. He pulled himself up and his chest heaved tight against his bodice. “I will not fight you brother!”

“What happened on earth that turned you so soft?” Thor's broad shoulders lifted and dropped with every heavy breath he took while Loki sulked closer. “Don’t tell me it was that woman, he watched the flicker across the older Prince's face. “Oh it was.”

A menacing laugh gritted through Loki's clenched jaw. “While maybe when we’re finished here,” he turned the sceptre above his head. “I’ll pay her a visit myself,” he slammed the sceptre onto the ground just as Thor launched himself forward, anger pulsing through his veins.

The brothers clashed in a cacophony of noise; hammer against sceptre. Prince against Prince while the tear in space above them rumbled and spliced with whips of light.

“We were gods!” Loki yelled as he swung the blade of his sceptre.  
“We have no right to rule over them,” Thor called back, moving so the blade barely nicked his throat.

The brothers were evenly matched, each knowing the move the other would rely on. Blow after blow they fought until a shuddering of the Bifröst shook Loki's feet from underneath him. Thor took the break and harnessed a bolt of lightning that made Loki fly backwards and skid across rainbow bridge.

Loki phased himself as Thor approached, ten and then twenty images of his brother surrounded Thor, laughing as Mjölnir swung at his side.  
“Brother don't do this,” Thor pleaded as a storm brewed above him.  
“There is no stopping this now,” Loki declared, his voice echoing across the images of him.

With a tremor in his lips Thor lifted his hammer and then stuck the ground with a pulse of thunder and lightning that threw the real Loki backwards and the visions of his dissipated.

With Loki flat on his back, Thor placed Mjölnir on his brother's chest, pinning Loki to the bridge. He walked back towards the cracking Bifröst; he had to close it but his brother had jammed it open. It would destroy the realms just as Felicity's father had warned, unless it could be closed.

“Look at you, the mighty Thor. All your strength and what good does it do you now, brother?” Loki laughed as he stayed pinned to the ground.

Thor knew what he had to do. He lifted his hand and called Mjölnir. The moment it hit his hand he raised it and then brought it down with a shattering crack onto the bridge itself.

The first strike splintered the bridge and the ground beneath him shook like an earthquake.  
“If you destroy the bridge you’ll never see her again!” Loki screamed as he pulled himself up from the ground.

Thor hit it a second time.  
“Forgive me,” he whispered and, before Loki could reach him, his hammer came down on it a third time.

The bridge shattered in a flash of blinding light and a wave of power that whipped the brothers backwards.

The observatory, and Bifröst with it, plunged off the edge of space just as the warriors three reached Thor, helping him to his feet.  
“My Prince, what have you done?” Hogun whispered.

Thor looked off into the vastness of space.  
“Forgive me my love,” he breathed, “Forgive me Felicity.”

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

 

After a week Felicity stopped reacting to every flash of light.  
After two she stopped staring up at the night sky expecting something to break through the clouds.  
Three weeks brought a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach and a realisation she refused to say out loud.

A month felt more like six and she dreaded the next steps as Felicity could no longer ignore the truth; Thor wasn’t coming back.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

“Can you see her?” Thor asked as he stood beside Heimdall at the edge of the cracked bridge.  
Every day since the Observatory plummeted into space, severing them from the rest of the realms, Thor had walked to the edge and asked Heimdall the same question, hoping something might have changed.

While Felicity’s father had summoned a backdoor between the worlds, it had simply harnessed the power from the Bifröst, splintering it away. Without the Bifröst there was no way in or out.  
  
“She is still hidden from me my Prince,” Heimdall spoke into the abyss. “A cloud hangs over her.”

“My lord, you are requested at the palace urgently,” Fandral puffed as he ran towards them.  
“What is it?” Thor asked as he turned, his cloak sweeping off the edge of the jagged bridge.  
“A revolt in the prison.”  
_Loki_.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Felicity watched lazily out the window at the puffy white clouds while they moved slowly across the sky and a distant flock of birds glided through the air around them. The car she was in inched slowly along with the rest of the workday traffic as the smell from her take out coffee permeated the air.

It had been six weeks since Thor had sworn to return and then left in a haze of light. Six weeks since he had sworn to look after her father, and six weeks since a sharp and blinding light canvassed the entire sky above them while she and Cisco waited for a return that never came.

In her heart she still believed both Thor and her father were alive and she tried not to allow herself to think any differently.

She tried not to let her mind linger on his reasons for not returning, because that meant having to admit that maybe it was for the best and that made her stomach knot with waves of nausea.

“Thanks for the ride again,” Jason, a co-worker from accounting chatted from the backseat. He hadn't stopped talking since they'd picked him up 15 minutes ago and Felicity could tell by the way the threads on Cisco's neck were twitching that Jason was about to out-stay his welcome.

“So do you guys usually play car games?” Jason remarked, making himself chuckle. One that ended with a snort.  
“We usually just drink our coffee in silence,” Cisco gritted under his breath.

“Oh what's, hmm, just about...,” Jason mumbled as he reached under the front seat. He returned with something that caught the light in his hands. “This is a weird coin,” he said as he poked his hand between the two front seats.

Both Cisco and Felicity looked.  
“That's Thor...mas'!” Cisco bleated as Felicity plucked the part of Thor's chest plate from Jason's hand.

It cracked like electricity in her hands.

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

Heimdall's eyes flung open as he stood alone on the edge of Asgard.

He saw her.

But he was not the only one.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

There was a brilliant flash of pure white light across the cloudy sky with a trajectory that put it behind a building just across the city.

“Do you think...,” Cisco started, his eyes blowing wide as he looked across to Felicity.  
“It could be,” Felicity breathed.

Cisco swerved the car onto the shoulder and tore up through the loose metal until he could pull off the freeway while Jason slid with a scream across the backseat.

The car mounted the sidewalk to turn sharply down a city street.  
“There!” Felicity announced as she caught sight of a glow at the end of an empty alleyway. Cisco used both his feet to brake and the car stopped suddenly.

Felicity flew from the car the instant it stopped, leaving her door open as she ran down the alleyway.  
“Stay here Jason. Don't touch my coffee,” Cisco remarked before he followed Felicity down the alleyway.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
The skirmish in the prison was over soon after Thor arrived, though no one was quite sure how it had started.

“Brother, did you have a hand in this?” Thor roared as he slammed his fist onto the plate glass that stood between them.

“Six weeks and you finally visit,” Loki yawned from the comfort of a high back leather armchair while he sipped on tea from a bone China cup.  
“You nearly destroyed our home,” Thor gritted, rage building in his eyes.  
“It was you who wielded the mighty hammer,” Loki shrugged while he crossed one leg over the other. “But this is _your_ home, not mine.” The cup vanished from Loki's hand as he stood up.  
“This is _our_ home and you would have seen it destroyed,” Thor retorted.

“And what of Midgard, whose home was that? Where you would have stayed away from your own to belong there,” Loki demanded.  
Thor pulled open the door of the cell, anger and rage pulsing through his veins like rivers of fire.

“They know nothing of our wars, they are no part of this!”  
A bitter laugh left the younger's lips. “Oh, brother, you are still blinded but your affection for those who lied to you. Those who will continue to lie to you. Ask them about the ‘one of two realms’.”  
“Speak with your forked tongue before I cut it out,” Thor gritted, drawing a knife from his belt.

“I'll tell her you said hello,” Loki sneered ominously.  
Thor lunged towards his brother, finally overcome with the anger that had been simmering inside.

But his brother turned into speckles of light in Thor's fingers.

He was a hologram.  
The cell was empty.  
Loki was gone.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
The alleyway itself was empty but Felicity, with Cisco a few steps behind, turned the corner following the sound of a rattle of tin cans.

Brushing a banana peel off his arm Thor stepped over the spilled trash cans. He was dressed in his armour, his red flowing cloak lifting with a gentle breeze. His hair was radiant and loose around his shoulders and his smile drew Felicity closer with a few unsteady steps.

He took a step forward and she ran towards him before she fell into his arms.  
“Took you long enough,” she said, her voice shaking as tears sprung from her eyes.

He took her hand and gently kissed the back of her knuckles, but his touch sent a cold shiver up her spine. She looked up at him, searching his azure eyes, but they were hollow, vacant.

She slipped her hand from his and stepped back.  
“What have you done with him?”  
“You were always a clever one.” Thor's smile twisted into another's.

“Cisco run,” Felicity yelled over her shoulder.  
But he couldn’t.  
Neither of them could.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled.... so I hope the 'action scenes are awful xox


	9. sanna | truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost the end guys....

Felicity’s head was pounding and her mouth was dry. Her fingertips grazed over the rubble beneath her hands as the bitter and metallic smell wafted up her nose. She fought to open her eyes against the heavy weights of her eyelids as her tongue wet her dry, chapped lips.

When she had finally won, her eyes creaked open but a haze in front of her took a few more moments to clear before she was staring at the damp, dreary rock walls of an unfamiliar place. Distant and hollow clunks startled her up, but chains that bound her at the wrists to the wall behind her didn’t let her stand.

 _Cisco_? She found him lying on his side, with his cheek pressed into the gravel floor and his arms twisted over and around chains similar to the ones that held her.

“Cisco,” she said, but her throat was so dry that it came out like a meaningless squeak. She kicked her barefoot out towards him, just slightly grazing the knee of his pants. But he didn’t move. She watched him carefully, and only looked away when she saw his chest rise and fall; he was breathing.

Felicity spent a few minutes looking around her surroundings. It was akin to a cave, damp and there was a putrid smell of iron on the cold, stale air. There was no door at the head of the cave and beyond that all Felicity saw was more of the same, wet-rock walls. Even if it wasn’t for the chains holding her there, she knew the slight bending of light around the edges of the mouth of the cave meant there was something impenetrable holding them there; the chains were superficial.

Turning her attention to the chains she stared at them without blinking for some time. They felt weighted on her wrists and the metal was rusted slightly at the edges, as you would expect in the sort of environment she found herself in. The links of the chains were thick and most certainly unbreakable, and they joined the wall with a bolt and pin no doubt buried deep into the cave wall. They moved when she did and made the expected noise when she _clinked_ her wrists together.

“Felicity?” Cisco’s barely audible voice took her attention away from the chains as he managed to sit himself up. “Where are we?”  
She squinted and patted her lips together. The taste of the air was unfamiliar, but she knew it well enough to make an educated guess. “Svartalfheim I think,” she answered.  
“As in...,” his eyes blinked and his head swayed as the sudden realisation they most certainly weren’t on earth anymore made him woozy.

He gasped as his hand moved to his throat. “Wait, how can I breathe?” he said, panicked.  
“The atmosphere on most of the realms is the same, while you might feel a little light-headed because Midgardians have a weaker disposition for atmospheric changes, you can breathe on at least five of the other realms. Seeing as you’re not dead, we're likely on one of those,” Felicity remarked with a casual shrug.

Cisco’s hand dropped slowly down from his throat, he wasn’t asphyxiating as it turned out. “Can you breathe on all of them?” he asked curiously.  
Felicity shrugged lopsidedly. “I wouldn’t know, I’m a special breed,” she said the words with the cynicism she had heard older ones use when they didn’t know she was around. “I was never allowed to leave Asgard except when I moved to Midgard.” _And only because I swore never to return._ She continued, “but I’m alive too so clearly I can breathe here. At least I’m not weaker than any other Midgardian.”  
It was a tiny victory that she found herself scoffing out a laugh at.

It was only then that Cisco noticed the chains on his wrists. He fought valiantly against them; trying to squeeze his wrists out before he attacked the bolt that held them to the wall behind him, but to no avail.

“They’re not really there,” Felicity sighed as she crossed her legs and sat her hands on her lap.  
Still fighting with the restraints, Cisco scoffed loudly, “Clearly they are.”  
She smiled forlornly at him before she closed her eyes and took a long, drawn inhale. She held it for a few moments before she pushed out the breath through her slightly parted lips. The instant her eyes opened afterwards, the chains vanished.

“Holy shit Jesus fuck shit, what the fuck?” Cisco stammered as his feet scuffed the ground while he pressed himself into the wall behind him, his eyes blown wide.  
“They’re an illusion, a trick of the mind,” Felicity explained.  
“How did you…?” He twiddled his fingers through the air as he shrugged, hoping she got his reference.  
“Just _will_ them away. Stop your mind from seeing them.”  
He blinked, rapidly, but the chains remained.

Felicity stood up and brushed the front of her jeans before she walked over and crouched just in front of him. “Close your eyes,” she instructed and he did. “Keep them closed and inhale slowly.” Cisco followed her instructions, holding the breath he’d just taken. “There are no chains on you.”

He jostled his hands as if to argue with her, but Felicity continued. “There are no chains there, they are weightless, imagine them weightless.” She spoke softly and calmly, her voice like a soothing breeze. “There are no chains on your wrists, repeat the words.”  
“There are no chains on my wrists,” Cisco repeated, Felicity’s voice echoing his.  
“Repeat it,” she encouraged. He did.  
“Now open your eyes.”

Cisco peeked between slithers before Felicity slapped her hands together in front of him. The loud sound of it made Cisco jolt upright and once on his feet he realised the chains had vanished.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” he rambled as he paced a small circle. “They’re gone.”  
“Congratulations,” Felicity chuckled softly.  
“Let’s go!” He ran towards the open mouth of the cave and before Felicity could warn him a bolt, much like electricity sent him stumbling backwards onto his ass.

“The chains aren’t real, but the magical force field in front of the entrance definitely is,” she sighed as she helped him off the ground.  
“A warning next time?” Cisco grumbled as he rubbed his neck and nursed the last effects of the jolt at his temple.  
“I mean, I did tell you we were on what you would consider an alien planet and you just saw iron chains disappear into thin air, I would have thought maybe you’d check.”  
“Noted.”

The two friends leaned back against their respective sides of the cave prison.  
“So why are we here?” Cisco asked the obvious question with a breathy sigh.  
“I don’t know,” Felicity answered with a sad shake of her head. She wished she did.  
Cisco kicked his feet through the dirt. “Who brought us here? Thor?”  
She shook her head, “no.”  
“But that was him right? The guy in the alleyway?”

“No. That was Loki, Prince of Mischief, Thor’s brother.” That much she did know.  
“The one the others were talking about? Why they had to return to Asgard?”  
Felicity nodded.  
“But if he’s _here_ , where are _they_?”  
She banded her arms across her chest. “I don’t know.”

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

  
“Where is she?” Thor raged, his dewy skin red with anger as his fists clenched at his side. He was pacing furiously, each irate step he took echoed around the throne room.  
Heimdall bowed his head stoically as the void of space echoed in his mind’s eye. “She is shrouded from me.”  
The answer did nothing but anger Thor more and his fist slammed against the wall while thunder cracked above them, just as Fandral and Hogun appeared.

“Not a good time for bad news I take it,” Fandral whispered to Hogun, whose eye twitched in response.  
Thor turned, the anger beating through the throbbing veins down his neck. “My brother?” he asked with clenched teeth.  
“Gone my Prince,” Hogun sighed.  
“How did he get off Asgard?”  
“We don’t know, dark magic we presume.”

The anger morphed into fear as Thor ran a trembling hand through his golden locks, now damp with sweat. “How did he know where to find her?”  
“Perhaps he didn’t and the destruction of the Bifrost has affected Heimdall’s vision,” his friend offered.  
The thud in Thor’s heart knew that was a fantasy because the pain that twisted through his chest like a knife driven in deep, said otherwise.

“What does he want with her?” He begged any realms that might hear him. “She has done no wrong, his fight is with me.”

Felicity’s father entered slowly, a heavy weight of regret across his brow. “I fear in my quest to keep her safe I have left her vulnerable,” he spoke limply.  
Thor turned to face the man who appeared to have aged a decade overnight. “What do you mean?"

Odin, who had awoken from his Odinsleep when the tip of the rainbow bridge plunged into space, stepped into the room, Freya a few steps behind.

“We will do everything in our power to find her,” Odin remarked, ordered and diplomatic, but Thor could sense there was something hidden beneath the surface of his words.  
“There is something you hide from me,” he spoke before he glanced towards his mother, who also wore the pangs of regret across her kindly expression. “There is something you all keep from me.”  
“Often not all is to be seen at one time,” Odin remarked, but Thor would not be dissuaded.  
“Enough of your coloured words!” he scolded. “What do you know?”

Freya laid a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder as she smiled softly at the broken will of her oldest son.

“He should know,” she whispered.

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

  
Felicity wasn't sure how much time had passed or whether the realm they were on even had days and nights like she had become accustomed to. Cisco had stemmed his freak out somewhat, but she could tell he was barely holding it at bay as he relentlessly chewed on his fingernails.

“Are your surroundings up to your standard your highness?” A smooth voice asked with a whip of a laugh that resonated around the small confines.

Cisco reacted with a muted scream as Loki passed through the mouth of the cave.

Felicity picked up the nearest and largest rock she could find and hurled it towards the figure cloaked in a tunic of green and gold. She wasn't surprised when it passed through him.

 _He wasn't really there._  
“It's uncanny how similar you and my brother are,” Loki smiled as he stepped out from the shadows on the other side of the force field that held Felicity and Cisco as prisoners.  
“Come through your barrier and I'll show you a few more similarities.”  
“Still the same feisty girl who refused to know her limitations,” he refuted.  
“Still the same boy playing tricks.”

Loki waved his hand and the dank cave transformed into a softly-lit room, much like the one she had lived in on Asgard, with decadent wall paintings and airy curtains that let the hazy rays of the setting sun soak her with warmth.  
“I would like to think I've become more proficient at it though,” he smiled, crooked but somewhat charming.

“What is going the fuck on?” Cisco stammered as he turned in circles while he fisted his eyes, one after the other.  
“Midgardians, like pathetic little ants, amused over parlour tricks and balls of string,” Loki mocked with a droll sigh.  
“Enough games Loki, this is pointless even for you. Why are we here?” Felicity demanded.  
He nodded towards an awestruck Cisco. “He was collateral damage. But you...,” he paused as he strode through the force field. “You are something else.”

Felicity lunged at him but his hand moved swiftly, wrapping her in chains that weighted her body. Cisco too rushed forward, but with the flick of Loki's wrist, he was thrown backwards and knocked unconscious.

Without touching her he lifted Felicity a foot into the air so their eyes were more level as he studied her with a coy grin. “You have no idea do you?”  
“No idea about what?” she spat as she tried to wriggle free, but it was impossible.

“No idea who you are or what you are. We have a lot in common you and I.”  
“I doubt that very much.”  
“We were both told we were something that we weren't. Told a story we could believe even if it wasn't the truth.”  
Felicity struggled some more. “I know who I am.”  
“Do you?”

He waded menacingly around the room, just letting the question sit unanswered for a few stretched moments. “Tell me Felicity, do you know that you are the one that will tear Asgard apart?”  
“You're insane,” she scathed.  
He laughed. “That doesn’t make me wrong.”  
With a twist of his finger the chains around her dissipated and Felicity ran straight to Cisco and crouched down beside him. He was still breathing.

“Enough games, what do you want Loki?”  
“There is a story of a woman born of two realms that will bring about the end of Asgard,” Loki explained with a satisfied smack of his lips. “That is you.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Did your brother knock you on your head?”  
“Didn't you ever wonder why they kept you locked away in the palace until they sent you away?”

“I chose to leave,” she argued.  
His smiled didn’t flinch. “Did you?”

The room changed to the open spaces of Asgard to a place forever embedded in her memory as if plucked from the very pages of her mind; the late afternoon air brushing against her ruddy cheeks. The sky bathed in colours of early sunset. White clouds like tufts of cotton playfully dancing with the breeze. The taste of a season changing on the tip of her tongue and the sound of water gushing past her feet as she stood on the edge of the river.

The arid air warmed her palms as her toes buried into the lush grass beneath her feet; it was like she was there.

She turned slowly, noting the familiar faces of children that she hadn’t allowed herself to think about for years until they stopped on a reflection she hadn’t seen in so long. She hadn’t noticed how much smaller she was than them, how her mousey hair whipped around her face while the golden hair of the girl beside her tumbled like a shampoo ad down her back. Her slender arms were like tree branches wrapped around her waist and her blue eyes were fraught with youthful angst. Even now, Felicity knew what her younger self was looking at; if only she could have leaned over and whispered in her little ear that it wasn’t what she thought.

But this wasn’t a chance to change history; it was merely a chance to watch it play out again with the eyes of hindsight.

“Congratulations Loki, your abilities have grown.” She turned slowly and saw the sight of Thor and Sabine but only now brushing it off with a regretful sigh. “But you didn’t need to show me this, I was there.”  
The smile didn’t dip off his face as he nodded back towards the vision of a young Felicity. “But did you see?”

Felicity watched with a knot of expectation in her chest as her young legs made the leap. Only.

She stepped back and her brow furrowed in confusion. A light had sparked between her feet, just the flash, barely noticeable unless that was all you focused on. She hadn’t missed. She had been tripped.

“Was that you?” she hissed as her eyes narrowed at the Prince beside her.  
“Not I,” he remarked with a tip of his head.  
“Then who?”

His smile lifted as though the answer sat on the very edge of his tongue but he was in no mind to divulge it just yet. The room changed, morphed into a throne room bathed in splendid gold and dripping with opulence.

She remembered this too. Only it must have been moments after she’d stumbled upon the argument Thor and his father were having. These weren’t her memories.

She watched as a defiant Thor stormed from the throne room and she listened to the echo of the door being closed behind him. Freya sighed and Odin ran a frustrated hand across his brow.

Felicity turned, taking a few steps to let the feeling of the room sink into her when her father appeared from behind. His image passed right though her, her fingertips grazing the hazy light he trailed behind.

“It’s time,” Odin said, his voice kept low and hushed, making Felicity step closer to hear them.  
“I beg of you more time my King,” her father pleaded, his head hung low and his voice aggrieved.  
“She is only a child,” Freya implored.  
“A child of two realms like the prophecy foretold.” Odin stood up and fiercely banged his sceptre on the marble floor, the sound of it echoing like a bullet around the room. “The child that could see Asgard torn apart, a child that would see Ragnarok befall us all.”

“And you knew all of that when you allowed her to live here,” Freya countered.  
The King’s shoulders were heavy. “I thought we could control what we know.”  
“We still can, permit me to teach her, for her to know the truth,” her father pleaded.

“No,” the All-father answered before the last of the words had left her father’s mouth.  
“I promised her mother the girl would be safe with us as she took her last breaths and now you mean to cast her out?” his wife uttered, her face contorting as she spoke.  
“I will not see Asgard fall.” Odin’s voice bellowed around the room of painted walls.  
“I appeal that she be allowed to leave. She believes Midgard could be another home, allow her to leave.” Her father, his eyes welled up with tears, begged of his King on bended knee. “Have I not served you all these years? Please grant my daughter the chance to leave.”

Felicity saw pain in all their faces as the air grew heavy, and then Odin nodded before adding a warning. “He must not know.”

Thor’s name was never said, but Felicity felt it stab at her heart. She closed her eyes, imaging the next conversation; _had they been her words or words she had been persuaded to feel them? Had she left Asgard because she had truly wished to or because the cogs around her had turned her that way?_ She didn’t know. Every thought she had could have been from the mind of another, plucked and played with like the strings of an instrument.

“Enough of this,” she spat as she gritted her teeth. “You’re showing me lies. It was my choice to leave Asgard.”  
Loki looked at her curiously with his head dropped to the side. “You don’t truly believe that, do you?” It was a genuine question; one she wouldn’t answer.

“It wasn’t safe for you to remain there, not when they saw how Thor’s destiny wrapped so intricately around your own,” Loki began, his voice raising as he spoke. “They saw to it that you wanted to leave, but that ache in your heart that felt like a wound that could never heal, that told you otherwise,” he continued, his tone becoming sneered. “They were afraid of you.”

“They have no reason to fear me,” Felicity bit back. “I would never hurt him or Asgard, I’m nothing but the child of two different worlds. They are gods.”  
“Oh but you do hold something that might make even the gods tremble.”  
“What?” she scoffed, “what could I possibly hold?”  
His answer came breathy a moment later.  
“The heart of a King.”

 **| ><|**  
**| |**

“How could you do that? Send her away like that, how could all of you do that?” Thor thundered after a story not so dissimilar was told to him. “You,” he spat as he eyed Felicity’s father, “your own daughter you cast aside.”  
“I sent her where I believed she would be safe,” he replied, his chest and voice burden with the same guilt he’d felt years before.  
“Felicity has a heart more pure than anyone in this room and yet you fear her,” Thor spoke almost mockingly as his hands fisted at his side’s and his jaw grew tight.  
“The prophecy speaks of a child,” Odin began, but Thor wasn’t interested in his words.  
“The prophecy? You speak as though they aren’t the ambled ramblings of people who spoke in riddles!” he growled. “She could no more hurt Asgard than either you or I could.”  
“The prophecy does not specify how, only that her presence would cause a tear down the heart of Asgard.” Odin’s voice, rough and short, grew in tone to match Thor’s.  
“You are all fools and because my brother too is a fool he is holding her somewhere.” He summoned Mjolnir and stormed towards the door. “I will turn every universe upside down until I find her.” A promise.

_In this life or the next._

  
**| ><|**  
**| |**

“You don’t need him,” Felicity pleaded as she turned to Cisco. “Return him to Midgard and I’ll do as you ask.”  
“This isn’t one of those moments where that’s necessary,” Loki laughed. “I could hold him over the edge of the cliff and you would do as I ask but it would be a lot more fun for me that way. However, you’re right, I have no need of him, but to deliver a message.”

Before she could utter another word, Cisco was gone.

“You’re arrogant and bull-headed, perhaps ambitious,” Felicity began and she crossed her arms across her chest and looked Loki in the eye. “But you’re also a fool. Thor won’t give up the throne to you. You must know that. You’ve bet too high on me.”

Loki smiled grew thin, but a slither of it remained. “He will.” He turned and walked slowly towards the door. “For you both,” he added as he turned to look at her one last time.  
“Both?” she remarked, bemused by his comment.  
His smile crept up his thin lips. “You don’t know yet, do you?”


	10. gildr | worthy

 

Felicity drew her gaze back, flinching for only a moment as his insinuation hung unchallenged.  
“You’re wrong,” she finally spoke, feigned resolution curtaining her face. Regardless of the turmoil and questions his words had spurred, she would not let that be known by him.  
“Am I?” His voice was sarcastic, his smile thin and almost menacing.

She stared him down without recoiling. She was astute and regimented in taking birth control, she had been from the tender age of 16; she had never missed a day, never even been out of sync by more than an hour. It wasn’t possible.

Of course, all things are possible. But it wasn’t probable.  
 _The fact he was Asgardian can’t have made any iota of difference, could it?_  
Her stern, tight-lipped expression winced for barely a moment, but it was enough to make Loki laugh dryly.

“Perhaps if it were only your life I bargained with, my brother might stay resolute, the Crown Prince of Asgard putting his Kingdom first. But…,” he stepped closer, shadowing Felicity, “…if I wager the life of his firstborn child, do you think him worthy enough to put Asgard above all others? Or will we watch him crumble?”  
“Why are you doing this? To rule a kingdom you would see destroyed? A kingdom that will not accept you as their king unless by force and to what end? Until someone poisons your cup or stabs you while you sleep? In all those books Loki, did the tyrant king ever truly rule?”

His face twisted angrily; she had bested him, or at least she thought.  
“You can’t possibly begin to understand where this begins and where this ends.” He stopped in the doorway with his back to her. “If you live to see it that far.”

**| ><|**   
**| |**

  
Cisco breathed in sharply as he sat bolt upright in a place that was most definitely not the familiar, arid streets of Starling.

The sky was watercolour blue and the clouds were like giant tufts of cotton floating across the sky. Wherever he was it was early morning as a fresh layer of dew had settled around and atop him.

His head was thumping like a college marching band slightly out of sync while a percussion quartet practiced behind his eyes. He groaned audibly as he stumbled to his feet and brushed the dander off the sleeves of his suede jacket.

He was in the thick of a forest, ring-fenced by oak trees and a forest floor of lush grasses and moss, regardless of which direction he looked. The air was crisp and fragrant, and the sun crept through a break in the canopy above him. There was also the soothing sound of a waterfall in the distance and birdlife hiding in the foliage. _Was he in Canada?_

Squinting, Cisco turned 360 degrees, and returned to the same spot, still with absolutely no idea where he was; or perhaps more alarmingly where he had been. The last thing he remembered was driving to work on the brink of a tirade at his infuriating colleague, an alleyway, Thor... then nothing. And yet he frowned with a sense that there was most definitely a gap.

He tapped a finger against each temple, in the unproven hope that it might _somehow_ shake the memory loose; but nothing. Another, louder and infuriated groan vomited from his mouth and ricocheted around the forest before he sunk his chin to his chest and huffed.

Those few seconds were all it took for Cisco to be ambushed, and when he looked up again, all he saw were a circle of blades pointing at him.

“Lay down your weapons,” a womanly voice said from behind the flanks. Cisco turned in time to see Lady Sabine moving to the front.

“Cisco Ramon of Midgard, how did you get here?” Sabine asked.  
“I don’t know where here is? I don’t suppose it’s Canada?”   
She smiled, amused by him. “I don’t know what this Canada is, but you are on Asgard. How did you come to be here?”  
He fisted his eyes before he pressed the heel of his palm against the side of his head. “I don’t know.”

**| ><|**   
**| |**

  
“Dammit, think Cisco, this is important, where did he take you?” Thor asked sharply as he paced long-stride circles around the ivory marble of his stateroom.

He was flustered; his anger was beyond that which could be dampened down, and it manifested itself in the thunderous claps and ominous clouds which quickly swamped the airy morning sky.

“I don’t know,” Cisco repeated with a frustrated sigh. “All I remember is you in an alleyway and then everything is just cloudy until I woke up here.”   
He had pummelled his temples and rubbed his scalp nearly raw trying to find the missing time, but it was as blank as a wiped, factory-reset phone. He had nothing.

Despite the inclement weather, the air was humid and sticky and his mood was much the same, so Cisco stripped off his jacket and threw it onto the table with an unexpected and pronounced _thud_.

But the startling noise took a backseat when something else was promptly noted.  
“Cisco your arm,” Hogun remarked and all eyes in the room, but Cisco's, looked.  
“Yes they’re small and puny, I know,” Cisco prattled, ending with an irritated huff as his eyes rolled. He was, after all, in a room full of ‘gun-arm’ toting men, and woman.  
“No, there is something on it,” Sabine added as she took his arm and pushed up the three-quarter shirt to fully reveal a forearm sleeve of inky black markings; something that resembled a long-healed tattoo.

Cisco screamed wildly before he frantically tried to rub the same off.   
“Wait, it’s a message,” Thor reacted and Cisco stopped immediately, even though his avid rubbing hadn't made any difference.

Thor read the markings on Cisco's arm in complete silence; looking up only when he was finished. “Loki has told me to meet him in 4 days' time on Helheim. Alone.”

“My Prince, you cannot, surely you know this is a trap,” Sabine said, arms banded across her chest.  
The sentiment echoed around the room.   
“The realm of the dead?” Cisco piqued.  
“Worse, the realm of the _dishonourable_ dead. All who arrive there never feel happiness again. It is a most cold and haunting place,” Fandral explained, a cautionary tone to his usually animated voice. Helheim was no place to be joked over.  
Thor turned to Sabine first. “I’m sure it is, but what else is there to be done?”  
“Then we’ll go with you,” Hogun announced and the others in the room nodded in agreement.  
“It said to come alone, I won’t risk Felicity.”

Cisco's eyes wandered back down to his discarded jacket, and the noise. Curiously, he searched the pocket and pulled out a rock. “How did that get in there? Do you think she put it there?”

Thor stole the rock from Cisco's palm and studied it for a few wordless moments. “Felicity, you genius.”  
“What am I missing?” Cisco wondered aloud.  
Fandral laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “Those rocks are from only one planet. He knows where she is.”  
“Svartalfheim, the realm of the dark elves and dwarves,” Thor breathed as he clutched the clue tightly, feeling the sharp points of the rock pierce into his skin. _He would find her._

**| ><|**   
**| |**

Despite having the element of surprise, the dwarves were known for their contraptions and fastidious gatekeeping; and when they arrived, they were well aware their enemies hid in the murky shadows of the dark world.

Thunder cracked overhead and Felicity smiled into the damp, lonely cave. He had found her; followed her one solitary breadcrumb based on a memory she wasn’t sure he would even recall… it was so long ago now.

Her fingers trickled down her stomach as the fond memory gave her a few moments of peaceful respite.

They were children, Felicity 11, Thor not much older; though you could be forgiven for thinking him, with his tall and broad stature, was far older, and Felicity in her somewhat feeble stage, much younger.

She was struggling to reach a book from a shelf in her room. A frustrated huff blew back her hair as she stretched to her small frame’s limit. Her fingertips grazed the spine, but not enough for it to budge, and then two hands caught her at the waist and lifted her into the air as though she was a weightless puppet.

She clutched the spine of the worn book before she was lowered slowly to the ground. She didn’t turn, aware her cheeks were undoubtedly flushed red and her smile was indelible; he couldn’t see her that way.

He turned her without much effort and, despite her wish for him to not see her so flustered and giddy, she was soon looking up at the ruddy face of the boy her heart ached for. Her very best friend. Her prince.

“You could have asked me to get it,” he hummed as he smiled down at her. His face was close, so close in fact that Felicity had to twist her free hand into the skirt of her dress just so she didn’t reach up a fraction and touch his smooth, perfect jaw; as much as she wanted to.  
“You weren’t here,” she whispered before she unravelled her hand and brushed back a few strands of hair that had fallen over her young face.

As her hand moved back down, her knuckles grazed his chest and sparks of electricity trembled through her body. Afraid her feelings would become obvious, Felicity grasped the book with both hands and pushed it against her chest to disguise the thumping of her heart beneath it.

Her chin dropped and she carefully studied her feet just to give herself something to concentrate on.   
His finger, warm and gentle, lifted her chin. His smile was charming, but perhaps a little bashful, and his finger lingered on the underside of her chin much longer than it needed to. “I’ll always be close enough for you to ask,” he spoke affectionately and for the few silent moments that followed she thought he might just…

And then his head shook, just a fraction, as though awakening himself out of a momentary lapse, and he stepped back and severed the contact between them. He laughed, lopsided and nervous, before he blinked down at the book still held in her tight clutches.

“What’s this one about?” he asked earnestly.  
Felicity felt the hot gush of embarrassment yet again as her stomach squirmed; surely for this he would mock her. “It’s about sediments and rocks across the realms.”  
She squinted, expecting a rebuking laugh, but none came.  
“Why?” he asked, and his question was wholly genuine.  
She walked across her room to the door, looked either side of it and closed it carefully.

“Father was talking the other day about a rock formation, how it was my mother’s favourite place, but I’ve never heard of it so I don’t think he’s talking about a place on Asgard. I thought if I found the rock, I might know where he means and maybe,” she chewed her lip anxiously.  
“Visit it?”  
She nodded, though, even at her tender age, she understood that she was not to leave Asgard; he wouldn’t allow it.  
Thor peeled one of her hands away from the book, finger by finger, until it was completely held in his. “Let’s find it then.”  
“I’ll never be allowed to visit,” she whispered as he led her to the spot where the afternoon sun warmed her bedroom floor.  
“When I sit on the throne, I’ll allow you to visit any realm you wish.”

They had never found the rock her father had spoken of, and all these years later Felicity still wondered if his memory had failed, or if perhaps she had heard him wrong. But, what they had learned was that many of the realms had unique rocks and sediments that could be found nowhere else, just like the volcanic rock on Svartalfheim. With its unique pumice texture and its dark sooty colour, flecked with the smallest fragments of diamonds; exactly like the one she had slipped into Cisco’s pocket when she ran to check that he was still breathing.

The rock which had brought Thor here.

“Perhaps if you say please, your brother will forgive you,” Felicity remarked as she felt a presence stir behind her.  
“This might turn out a little more archaic than I was hoping for, but no matter,” he growled.

**| ><|**   
**| |**

Felicity tried to fight him, and her breath was raw and brittle as he pulled her towards the one of the many cliffs that dotted the bleak and barren landscape. But she was hardly a match for him, and with her hands bound up in a spell, he soon had her delicately resting on the precipice.

“Brother!,” he screamed into the cold, stale air. “Face me.” His voice dropped to a menacing grow when the breeze shifted and the streaks of lightening vanished from the sky.

Thor landed a few feet away.  
“Let her go Loki, your quarrel is with me,” Thor spat as lightning danced off the tips of his fingers.  
“I happen to think my quarrel is with you and your beloved,” Loki laughed dryly. “She will after all bring the destruction of Asgard, and with it all others will fall.”  
“You’ve gone mad.” Thor rushed forward as the other’s appeared behind him, swords drawn and arrows nocked.

But when he pushed her a little closer and one of Felicity’s feet dangled freely off the edge of what seemed like an endless crevice into the core of the planet itself, Thor stilled.

“That’s close enough,” Loki warned and Thor held the warriors three at bay.  
“What is it you want from me brother? Your freedom? It is yours, leave her and take it, I will not follow you this day,” Thor pleaded.  
“Lay down your weapons and perhaps we could talk.”  
Felicity scrambled to put both her feet on the ground, but it was just out of reached. With pain etched into his expression Thor ordered the weapons to be sheathed and the arrows to be dropped, before he too dropped his weapon, Mjölnir, to the ground beside his feet, with a thud that shook the very core.

“See now, that wasn’t so hard now was it?” Loki said, a wiry smirk twisting up his thin lips. He pulled Felicity back just enough so that her toes gained tenement on the edge of the cliff.

Clouds circled, greys and deep midnight blues swirling into a vortex that embodied Thor’s growing anger. “Careful brother,” Loki remarked as he glanced upwards, “you wouldn’t want me to accidentally drop her. I’m not even sure you could survive that drop.”  
  
“Loki!” Thor’s voice thundered, and boomed like an earthquake across the skies. “She is no part of this.”  
“You grew soft, weak, pitiful,” the younger Prince spat. “You don’t deserve the throne. Relinquish it to me.”  
“Don’t do it,” Felicity gasped as her feet balanced on the very edge.

Thor’s eyes found hers, even across the barren ground between them. The resolution on her face and the soft smile that caught up just one corner of her lips; as though she had found peace and was offering him the same.

_What makes a worthy king is the willingness to be whatever his people need him to be, to sacrifice…_ Her words rung over and over in Thor’s head.  
 _A king makes choices he knows he must._

“I love you,” he mouthed. Raptured in her eyes; embraced by her soul.  
She nodded, just a fraction, to say she had heard his words and even more so, that she believed them too.

Loki, sensing the power slipping from his hands, sneered as he pressed his sceptre into Felicity’s stomach and a vision appeared in the fog beside them. “If not for her, then perhaps for your son. Your firstborn.”

The image was Thor with a small baby in his arms, bathed in a warm auburn glow. Small fingers wrapped around a much larger one. Time shifted and the smaller hand grew in the larger palm; a child growing with the passing of the seasons, until a boy of 8, with long blonde hair braided at one side smiled cheekily; a boy that looked just like Thor.

Thor fell to his knees, the weight and pain tearing a hole through his heart. “Brother please,” he begged.  
“Give me what I ask,” Loki demanded as the image he’d produced puffed into a ball of ashen smoke.  
Tears filled Felicity’s eyes as she softly shook her head. “Thor you can’t.”

_A child born of two worlds that would tear Asgard apart… because she held the heart of a King._

“I can’t lose you,” Thor wept, every part of his body aching as he clawed forward on his knees.  
“I know,” Felicity whispered. She understood what she needed to do.

And he saw the same in her eyes.

She kick up at Loki, pushing him backwards. The sudden jolt made him lose his grasp and his sceptre fell out of reach, breaking the spell that bound her hands. In a moment that felt like it moved in slow motion, Felicity felt herself fall. She felt the moment the dirt passed between her toes and the weightlessness that plucked the breath from her lips.

The feeling was surreal.

Eyes closed.  
Wind whipping across her chest.  
Breath in her throat.

Falling.  
Down  
Falling.

Perfect summers.  
Beautiful winters.  
Moments treasured.  
So many more missed.  
A goodbye never said.

Falling.  
Down.

Her trembling hand outstretched.   
One last thought.

Instinctively her fingers coiled around the object as it hit her palm. The snap of air. A gasp.

Not falling.  
 _Flying_.

A tentative eye opened, struggling against the rush of hair that washed against her face.  
Surreal.

Mjolnir in her hand.  
She landed, perhaps crashed, to the ground.

She looked down at the object that had felt weightless in her hands. She was holding it...  
“How did you know?” Thor asked, his voice broken and rasped as he looked down to the hammer in her hands. “How did you know it would come?”  
“I, I didn't,” she stammered as he helped her up and his arms surrounded her.

A trembled finger trickled down over her stomach, tentative and unsure. “Is it true?” he asked softly, threads of a quiver woven through his words.  
She shadowed his hand with her own. “I don't know.”

**| ><|**   
**| |**

  
For once Loki’s words were not coloured lies, or tricks spoken to deceive, and 8 months later, in the Palace on Asgard, Felicity gave birth to a son, Leif Thomas Thorson.

Holding the new born carefully in his arms, and while the ladies in waiting tended to Felicity, he kissed her damp forehead and whispered a promise into her ear. “In this life for as long as I breathe and in the next, wherever that may be, I will love you.”  
Felicity smiled weakly, her body overcome with exhaustion, before she used what little strength she could muster to brush coils of Thor’s golden hair back from his face. She touched a finger to the corner of his smiling lips and sighed happily.

“I love you too,” she breathed, as his face sunk into her warm palm.

As for Loki, his new home was a prison cell built just for him where neither his wit, nor his tricks, would see him escape.

And Felicity, for her part, finally learned the truth of her mother. She was not of Midgard, but rather was a Priestess for The Norns; a group of three Goddesses that together determined a person’s talents and fates. She was no goddess herself, but swore an oath to protect the runes of fate housed within the temple in the realm just ‘beyond’. They met and fell in love in the solstice, and a child of that love was born to them; Felicity.

But as wars were lost, many in the realms grew hateful at their fates and wrathful and those that kept them protected. The temple was destroyed and, in an effort to protect them, the runes were scattered across the universe. Felicity’s mother escaped with her as an infant, with the help of the woman Felicity had believed to be her Aunt. But she was wounded in the skirmish, and by the time they reached the gates of Asgard there was nothing to be done.

With her last few breaths she made Felicity’s father swear an oath that he would protect their daughter. She spoke of a gift the child was given by the divines, but he knew no more than that. For her own reasons, she made him swear that this truth be revealed only when the girl was old enough; a time he would know. It was a secret only a handful knew.

A child of two realms.

Deemed worthy.

 

**léttir | end**

 

**Author's Note**

**Yes, there is an epilogue. I made a promise to myself and Ash that I intend to keep. Hopefully the wait won't be too long.**

**I'm forever indebted to everyone that supported and encouraged this crackship.  I truly NEVER expected the amazing response (I pretty much wrote it for my own fan fic needs).  I'm especially grateful to Ash, for all the things "we need and deserve".**

****


	11. Epilogue

Ivory silk gliding over opulent marble. Red lips smiling nervously. Clammy hands. Heart beating behind a snug-fit bodice. Time frozen. Eyes watching. Breath hitched. One step, then another. Crowds. Expectations. A King.

His Queen.

Felicity could feel the butterflies churning in her stomach as it tightened in knots while those thoughts flooded her brain like static noise. That would be tomorrow.

Because tomorrow she would marry Thor Odinson, Crown Prince of Asgard, on the first day of his coronation which would see him sit on the throne he was always destined to.

She brushed the hand-painted, golden brush through her long tresses as she blinked languidly at her reflection.

Nearly two years ago she had felt her hand grip around the handle of a weapon, a totem as such, of Asgard and its son, Thor. They had told no one that hadn’t seen it for themselves, fearing that such knowledge could bring about an unrest they weren’t prepared for. There were still questions unanswered and some paths shrouded in shadows that they had not yet foreseen, but they had made a home for themselves on Asgard and duty obliged that a King marry his Queen.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want that; she did – with all her heart. Thor was her twin flame, the love of her life, and she knew his feelings for her were in kind, but there would be something stagnant about this moment being less about them, and more about the dignitary of it all.

She sighed, listless, it was probably just the nerves getting to her. The wedding tomorrow would be what every girl who ever dreamed of being a princess would want, there would be no expense spared and everything, even down to the finest details or the crystal shoes on her feet, would be elegant and stunning.

But she had never loved a King.  
She had loved a boy.   
A boy who made her laugh and listened to her prattle on about things she knew he cared little for. A boy with an inherent love of snakes and a zest for life.

A boy who grew into a man; a man with every quality she had ever wanted.

Her thoughts were cut short when the door to their bedroom creaked open and Thor wandered in, dressed simply in a charcoal cloak that draped down his statuesque body and was pinned with a small broach that bared the crest of Asgard.

“How’s Leif?” Felicity asked as she rose off the stool.  
Thor wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her tightly into a sweeping embrace. “He’s perfect, just like his mother.”  
“And just like his father, I found him hunting for snakes in his room this morning,” Felicity chortled, remembering the 14 month old peering under his bed with a fierce and focused expression.  
Thor’s face lit up with a jovial smile. “And did he find any?”  
“Not that I’m aware of, but Lottie would have had a heart attack if he had,” Felicity remarked; Leif’s kindly grey-haired Governess was not at all fond of snakes.

“Shall we walk?” Thor asked though his feet stayed anchored and his arms remained tethered to her waist.  
“I’ll just get my cloak,” she answered as she gently pushed free from his embrace. She glanced down at the mirror and pinned the side of her hair back before she found her scarlet cloak and wrapped it over her ethereal silk gown.

The ivory dress was simple; gathered at the shoulders with brocades of gold and at the waist with a woven belt, it was quite different to what she had worn on Midgard, but they had been the dresses she had romanticised as a child, so the change didn’t seem all that exceptional.

He took her hand and they walked quietly past Leif’s darkened room and out of their quarters.  
“Where are we walking to?” Felicity asked quietly as they walked one of the vast hallways, where people busied themselves with preparations for the wedding.  
He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “It’s a surprise.”

They strolled in directions that didn’t quite make sense, but it gave Felicity a chance to admire the opulence that was being bestowed in their honour, and while it still might not have been the wedding she had once imagined, all that mattered was that she knew exactly who she was marrying; the man she loved. No question.

Finally, one hall led them outside where the palace swept into the picturesque natural landscape of Asgard. It wasn’t the manicured Palace gardens as such, those sat on the other side of the Palace, but it was beautiful all the same. He started to lead them down the sloping hill that fanned out into the forest and poppy fields Felicity had adored as a child, when Felicity stopped halfway down the embankment.

“Where are we going?” she laughed prudently and she squinted into the distance, but there was little to see in the ebony shadows.  
“I thought we could walk through the wild flowers,” he answered as he tugged her a little closer while she stood above him on the slope. “I remember how much you love them.”  
“You know me so well,” she remarked, a soft smile plumping her lips.  
“I know this wedding tomorrow isn’t you,” he commented, lifting her chin up with his finger when it sunk down into her chest.  
“It’s not that I don’t want to marry you, of course I do,” she explained gently. He nodded; he’d never thought any less. “It will just be a lot,” she simpered.  
“I know.” Thor offered her a tender smile and a small nod of appreciation. “I know that you love me as me, not as the Prince of Asgard.”  
She pecked his nose with a delicate kiss. “Tomorrow you will be a King.”  
He kissed her hand before he squeezed it between both of his. “I will always be the man that stands before you now, the man who has loved you just as long as he has known what love is and before that, as the boy who adored you. Nothing will ever change that.”

Felicity rested her free hand against his cheek. “I know.”  
They set off once again into the sweeping forest with only the slithers of the moon to guide them. The air was pleasant and fragrant and the company was perfect.

As they neared the clearing where the flowers grew, tiny speckles of glowing light came into view. Felicity stopped a second time and looked up at Thor who was smiling.

“Through the clearing is everyone that matters to us, and a man ordained to marry us,” he spoke as he turned to face her. “Marry me tonight, as we are, just two people.”  
“But tomorrow,” she whispered, her mouth still gaped.  
“Tomorrow there will be a wedding, and a feast, and an entire realm in celebration. They will have their king and their queen, but tonight will belong to us.”  
Her eyes became glassy with tears as her lips quivered.  
“Have I upset you?” he asked, a small panic befalling his face.  
“No,” she cried softly, “quite the opposite in fact.”  
“Is that a yes?”  
She brushed back a few spent tears and nodded. “Yes.”  
“Then your wedding awaits,” he whispered before he brushed a kiss across her damp cheek.

They got married that evening under a blanket of stars and torch bugs that danced in the gentle breeze, and surrounded by wild poppies and the distant sounds of a cascading waterfall. The people that mattered were there, their friends and those they called family; the warriors three, Felicity’s ‘Aunt’ Donna, Cisco, Frigga, and of course their son, Leif, dressed in his finest little outfit, with the slingshot he never left home without, tucked into his pants.

It was perfect.  
It was them.

**| ><|**   
**| |**

With their fingers entwined and an effortless smile on both their faces, they stopped outside the private quarters they had called home for the last two years; a palace within a palace with four bed chambers, private washrooms, and a wrapped-around balcony that overlooked both the gardens to the south and the city to the north, spread out below them.

But Thor stopped outside their bed chambers and their fingers slipped apart. “I will take my leave my Queen,” he whispered, a sultry tone to his deep voice. “Before it becomes impossible to leave you.”  
Felicity smiled graciously as he stooped down to dance a warm and delicate kiss across the back of her knuckles. There was much to be done before the morning, not only would the day be seeped in the theatrics and opulence due a royal wedding, but it was also to be the start of his coronation and such demanded his time that night to prepare.  
“Would it be terribly selfish of me if I asked you to stay?” Felicity asked softly as she kept her eyes low, glancing up only when she was finished speaking.  
“If you ask it, you know I will stay,” Thor answered, but his brow was troubled.  
Her fingertips grazed his jawline as she offered him a gentle smile. She shared him with Asgard, a burden she was willing to accept.

“I know,” she whispered softly while her nails teased the tips of his beard. “That’s why I won’t ask you to stay. Instead…” She lifted herself onto her tip toes and pressed her body against his broad chest before she pecked a soft kiss against his full lips. “Instead, I want you to think about me tonight and how completely I will be yours tomorrow.” As she spoke the words brushed against his mouth and a guttural moan escaped from his parted lips when she pulled back.  
“There is no time I don’t think of you,” he admitted in a growled whisper near her ear. “But in my dreams tonight I will map out every part of your body that I will kiss tomorrow.”

Felicity stepped back and for a few moments their fingers stayed coiled together, twisting in infinite circles, before they fell apart; hers to her side to graze against the luxuriant, gauzy fabric of her gown and his to float alone in the space between them.

“Sleep well Thormas,” she spoke with a charmed laugh, a moment of levity; not a king and his betrothed, but a man with the woman he loved and who loved him, utterly, in return.

He took his leave with a smile and a bow before Felicity closed the door and braced herself against it, with a happily smile lifting up her face. She was married, in the only way that truly mattered to her, to the man that had grown from the boy she had always loved.

**| ><|**   
**| |**

The wedding was every bit as orderly, opulent, decadent, and beautiful as one would have expected. White flowers lined every hallway and streams of ivory hung from the ceiling of the Great Hall. Felicity’s gown was made from the finest silk and embroidered with threads of gold in delicate floral patterns, and the train was ornate and sweeping. The scent of honey and cherry blossoms drifted through the air, enriching every breath taken, and all who was anyone attended with decorum and ceremony befitting them.

But for Felicity, even with all its ornateness and its stunning beauty, it had nothing on standing barefoot in a field of flowers while the gentle evening breeze stroked her cheek. _This_ was for show, but _that_ had been for love.

As the night stretched on the mood became decidedly more jovial as much of the pomp and politics were left at the entrance of the feasting hall. Both Felicity and Thor stole a few moments with an exhausted Leif before his governess took him to bed.

“We made that,” Thor leaned down and whispered in Felicity’s ear as his arms enveloped her from behind as they watched their son be carried away.  
“It would seem Midgard birth control is no match for Asgardian sperm,” Felicity chuckled after she sipped on her glass of honey-mead.  
He turned her and her gown swished along the floor behind her. “Are you happy?” he asked softly.  
She nodded with her eyes focused on him. “Indelibly so.”  
The raucous sounds of their guests bled out into the hallway and a shout of laughter soon followed.  
“We should get back to the feast,” she sighed. While the revelry sounded like fun, her feet ached in the shoes she was wearing and the tight bodice of her dress was beginning to make breathing quite a laborious effort.

Thor took her hand as a devilish smile turned up his lips. “I don’t think they’ll miss us,” he remarked as he spun her on the spot and began to run away from the cacophony of noises.

Felicity’s feet skidded along the marble floors for at least three halls before she stopped, pulling back on Thor’s hand. “I can’t run in these shoes a moment longer,” she puffed, lifting the skirt of her dress just enough to show off the stunning, but wholly impractical, crystal etched shoes.

Still wearing his puckish smile, Thor crouched down and tore them off one foot after the other before he threw them out the open archway and onto a grassy knoll. She shrieked as he took her hand once more and they started running along the open-air corridor until they reached the very end of it and an archway of stone spilled out into the rolling gardens.

On the very edge of the cobbled path Felicity breathed in deeply, letting the crisp air of the night fill her lungs. The moon was high and reflected off the fountain a stone’s throw away, and the sound of revellers was faint in the distance behind them.

Thor toed off his shoes and took the first step onto the lush grass before he turned back to Felicity and offered his hand. “Run with me, like we used to.”  
She smiled as she slapped her hand onto his. “Lead the way.”

As they ran the wind slapped her cheeks pink and her hair fell in tendrils of curls from the pins that had once held it back. Her train billowed behind her in the wind as his cape too fluttered like a fabric kite caught on the breeze. The ground was a little cold and damp, and Felicity was sure the feet of her ivory stockings wouldn’t be salvageable; but it didn’t matter.

They ran until the Palace lights grew to be like distant stars and the sounds of their wedding feast could barely be heard. They ran until the shadows of the night enveloped them and nothing but the white light of the moon guided their steps.

They ran until he stopped beside an old stone bench, beneath the eaves of a tree that had seen generations pass under its strong limbs.

“Are you happy?” he asked softly a second time, but his voice carried in the still air.  
Reassuringly, Felicity cupped his face and smoothed her thumb up his cheek. “Yes,” she assured him.  
“I would give you whatever you ask of me. If you told me to fetch the stars from the farthest planet I would do so. If you asked for an ember from Hel itself I would carve it from the mountain myself,” he offered with the kind of sincerity in his voice that made Felicity believe every word.  
“You don’t need to do any such thing,” she breathed before placing a delicate kiss on his cheek. “All I will ever ask of you is that you love me and trust me, with those two things we could face anything.”  
He took her hand gently from his face and kissed the inside of her palm, soft but lingered. “Always,” he breathed.

He gestured down to the stone bench and smiled. “Could we sit for a while?”  
She indulged him and sat down, expecting him to do the same, but when he didn’t Felicity looked up and caught the impish and lopsided grin on his face in the silvery glow of the moon.  
“What is that smile for?” she chuckled, as a warm blush speckled her cheeks.  
Thor didn’t answer, but he did get down on his knees just in front of her. Lifting one leg he tenderly kissed her ankle through her pitiably thin stockings. She sighed, and a chimney of fog spiralled up from her pink lips. He crawled his lips further up her leg until he stilled at the inside of her knee to lavish the sensitive skin there with a fluttering of urgent and intimate kisses.

His hands snaked up her thighs and thick digits coiled over the waistband of her pantyhose. With a twinkle in the corners of his eyes, Thor gazed up at Felicity and wordlessly asked her with a smile. She nodded and instantly he pulled the stockings down her legs, with his knuckles leaving tortuously pleasing tracks down her thighs. Within moments the soiled ivories were discarded on the ground and his lips had returned to her legs with even more fervour.

She coiled two fingers in his mane of golden hair, tugging it playfully as his tongue moved further up the inside of her thigh.  
“You do well to remember where we are Thor,” she laughed, her breasts pressing tight against the boned bodice; enough to make them ache with desire to be free and fondled.   
“I’m exactly where I want to be,” he replied, his voice muffled beneath the curtain of her skirt that sat across her knees.  
She tugged a second time and he growled ravenously before he nipped the top of her thigh. “We’re in the royal garden my love, someone could walk in on us.”  
A single, thick and exploratory finger sunk between her folds, using her flimsy panties to wick up the arousal there before he peeked over the rolled-up hem of her skirt. “Ask me to stop my Queen,” he said with a wide and lopsided grin.

Her smile lifted, higher at one end than the other, before she daintily shook her head.  
“Perfect,” he rasped before he disappeared beneath the wall of fabric once again.

He kissed her nether lips through the wispy fabric as he inhaled, deeply, her ardent and musky aroma. A groan escaped Felicity’s lips before she nested her teeth into the full lower one to stifle more because the air was still and the night was quiet; she was well aware her voice could travel some distance.

Thor licked eagerly at her sex through the weave, tasting her with salacious enthusiasm. But soon the barrier between them became obnoxious and he teared them with little more than a tug. Felicity gasped as she felt the fabric come loose around her body, but her mind was soon distracted when his tongue dipped between her sweltering folds, licking with the flat before he rolled the tip over her swollen clit.

She wanted to curse eagerly, and throw her hands up in utter enjoyment, but she did neither; instead she stapled her lip tighter between her teeth and bled her knuckles white as she gripped onto the edge of the carved, stone arm.

The sounds emanating from beneath her skirt were scandalously carnal, hums and growls as he lapped and sucked at her sex relentlessly. Felicity soon moved with him, rocking against his tongue and pushing him in deeper between her wet petals until she was shuddering and thrashing against his ministrations.

Knowing she was falling over the edge, Thor delved his tongue inside her pulsing entrance just to give her that final push, and Felicity came with a whimpered moan and shudder.

He took everything her body gave him with delighted moans until Felicity was completely sated. Appearing out from underneath her dress, he wore her glistening release proudly across his lips and in the tips of his beard.

“I ripped these,” he remarked impishly as he dropped her torn panties onto her lap.  
She tucked them into the top of her dress before she pulled on his armour and feverishly kissed his lips. They were salty and slick with her climax and as her tongue snaked into his mouth, she could taste herself in there too.

“Perhaps we should take this inside now,” she hummed, with her lips still lightly pressed to his.  
He immediately stood up and took her hand, and once more they were running freely through the garden; toes squelching in the dirt and her wet thighs deliciously rubbing together in a delirium of friction that kept Felicity aroused with every step.

They fell into their room, puffing and exhilarated, barely closing the door before they fell against it in a tirade of frantic kisses. Her body rose up the back of the door, one leg coiling around his thigh for balance while she lifted up to the highest tippy toe she could on the other. His fingers, ordinarily nimble, fumbled with the laced closure of her bodice and, frustrated, he let out a muffled groan atop her lips.

“Are you particularly fond of this dress?” he growled against her mouth before he skimmed his teeth across her plump lip.  
“It’s undoubtedly the finest in all of Asgard,” she sighed as his lips trekked down her sweat-laden neck. “But no, not all that much,” she added with a silvery rasp.

With arousal coursing through his veins, Thor ripped the bodice straight down the seam under Felicity’s arm and it fell, heavy, to the floor, landing in a heap around her feet. All that was left on her body was a gauzy slip, so thin that when he pulled back he could see every inch of her body behind it. It floated like a cloud around her figure, but pulled taut around her curvy hips and her budded nipples.

The orange glow that bathed their room melted like honey into the sheer, creamy fabric and there was no stilling the hungry growl that reverberated from his smiling lips.

He stooped to catch one nipple with his mouth, sucking the tightly coiled bud between his lips before his teeth grazed the ridges and his tongue batted across the tip.

Her arousal was pooling between her folds as her breathing became uneven and raspy, while her nails embedded in the grain of the wooden door behind her.

Thor stepped back to study her with an ardent smile as he idly patted his tongue across his famished lips. Slight hints of her salty sweetness remained, but he was eager to feast on her a second time that night; his wife willing.

He started to unbuckle his cape where the draping red velvet fabric met with the polished plate-silver spaulders when Felicity caught his wrist with both her hands.  
“Wait,” she encouraged, her voice thin and breathless.  
He watched her curiously as one hand moved down the smooth lines of his chestplate. “Could we keep this on maybe?” she asked with a coquettish pout.

Thor’s hand dropped from the clasp and his hair spilled forward over his eyes as he looked down at her and chuckled, deep and husky. “Whatever you ask my Queen.”

He lifted her effortlessly up the door, and instinctively her legs spread and coiled around his waist. The instant the smooth ridges of the banding across his core touched the scorching heat between her legs, Felicity whimpered in pleasure. The sensation was rippled down her spine as the cool bite of the unmalleable metal rivets met with the soft petals of her sex.

Each step Thor took towards the bed had Felicity brushing soft against hard until the undulation of it had her throwing her head back in gratification. By the time they reached their four-post bed, her body was dripping with desire and her breath was ragged and thin. Even the gentle caress of their gold-imbued linen as he sat her down on the edge of the bed made Felicity moan in unsated desire.

He brushed back her hair and her head fell limp into his cupped hand. Her eyes were blown wide and her cheek flushed pink; the very same dusty pink that dripped down her throat and fanned out across the tips of her breasts.

Seeing the desperation in her eyes and the way her teeth fossicked with her swollen lip made him smile as he lifted one leg and sat it between both of hers. The bed buckled and Felicity tipped forward enough that her mound grazed the greave that sat at his shin. Wantonly she bucked her body against him, feeling the same slide against her naked sex. The sound of him unstrapping it echoed like a crack of leather through their bedroom before it fell with an apologetic thud to the marble floor.

Felicity fell back into the billowed embrace of their bed with a needy sigh before Thor lifted up the filmy slip and brushed it up past her core. When he stooped to remove the second greave he blew gently on her rosy sex, making her sob out his name.

Shadowing her body with his own, Thor swam two fingers through her slit while his smiling eyes met with her wild ones. “Shall I rip this one too?” he asked after he nodded down to the slip that sat ruched up near her breasts.  
“This one I like,” she teased as they slowly sat up together.  
He shimmied the slip over her head and it floated gracefully to the floor to drape delicately over the hard, plated armour he had just shed from his legs; a imagery of them perhaps.

For the second time that evening, the King of Asgard knelt before his wife with a roguish smile dancing his lips upwards.  
She raked her nails across his scalp making him hum happily. “A king kneels for no one Thor, you are a King,” she purred.  
“I will always kneel for you,” he promised before he dropped down to kiss her thigh. He felt her shiver beneath his lips as he tasted the last remnants of her spend dusted across her skin.

Using the flat of his vambraces, Thor spread her legs wide and hummed as her wine-hued sex blossomed in front of him. She was ripe and her arousal coated each fold like a beautiful gloss that smelled rich and appealing as he sucked in a breath.

His tongue lightly circled her outer folds twice before he looked up her panting chest to meet her wide eyes. “Does this please you my Queen?”  
She would have liked to have thought of some witty reply but her brain was so addled with pleasure all she could do was nod blithely.

With two fingers Thor opened her folds and his thumb gently lifted back the hood of her clit before he leaned in and took the pink pearl between his lips. He sucked, pulling her skin taut, as Felicity silently screamed while her hands knotted in his locks.  
“Does this please you my Queen?” Thor asked again as his eyes wandered up her body.  
She whimpered a shaky “yes.”

With the heavy flat of his tongue, Thor licked along her perineum in a single stroke before lapping it back and flicking off at her clit. “Does this...,” he started.  
“Yes,” Felicity interrupted. “Please,” she added with a stifled sob.  
The instant the plea left her mouth Thor plunged two brawny fingers inside her pulsing entrance and Felicity screamed in delight before she cupped a hand over her mouth. Her body clamped around him even as he twisted and pumped inside her, her juices spilling down his digits as his tongue continued to sweep around her sensitive clit.

When her second orgasm hit, it was stronger than the one before and her entire body convulsed as she watched him drink in every morsel she gave.

He eased her through the thunderous climax with slow and hooked strokes of his finger against her cushioned walls until her body shook through the last of it.

Spent, Felicity fell back once again onto the bed and played her arms above her head, her fingertips just barely grazing the edge of the mattress, while Thor kissed the threads of her tepid throat.

Lifting one arm Felicity lazily trickled the tips of her fingers across the different textures of his polished armour; from the decadent, velvety cloak that ran through her fingers like liquid, to the ornaments that decorated his chest piece, and the brittle edges of the sleeves almost akin to the scaled skin of a dragon.

With hazy eyes and a breathy sigh she hooked her fingers into the hardened leather vest and drew him closer to her lips, but stopped short of a kiss.  
“You, I want you,” she said, her voice raspy and hoarse.  
“You have me,” he hummed as he stroked the soft and supple skin across her belly. “You always have.”  
Felicity snapped a rough and unfinished kiss against his lips. “You know what I mean,” she remarked as the nails on one hand skated down his jaw, making him hiss wantonly.

With one hand he shifted her like a ragdoll up the bed and she scurried quickly to lean up against the ornate tower of pillows at the head.

He knelt on the bed and it buckled beneath his weight. She was wholly naked and he devoured every inch of the view she gave him as he fought with the clasp of his pants.  
“Everything alright there?” Felicity chuckled as her fingers grazed over the tips of her thighs, keeping her body close to the edge where he'd taken her.  
“These aren’t exactly designed for quick removal,” Thor grunted as he battled with the rigid textile.  
Felicity lightly tapped her sex with the length of her middle finger which sent a delectable shiver across her body and sparked an eruption of goose bumps across her stomach. “I might get myself there first,” she spoke with a sultry sigh before she dipped her fingers into her slit and brought them out moment later, glossed in her arousal.

Thor leaned over and took the same fingers into his mouth, sliding his tongue between her digits and sucking the tips. It seemed to be the distraction he needed and he shucked his heavy pants with unashamed vigour.

She gripped a fistful of cloak and ran the edge over her nipple as he sat back on his heels and watched. The friction as the richly-velvet fabric grazed over her budded nipple was unlike anything she'd felt before and her core rumbled with the makings of her third consecutive orgasm while Thor fumbled at the strappings which held his cuirass.

“No time, leave it on,” Felicity panted, her empty walls aching to feel full with his cock.  
His length was rigid and ready, and the tip glinted with tiny beads of pre cum before Felicity tugged him tightly for a few strides while he inched closer. He slid into her sex with ease, her arousal coating him with slick warmth as he pressed into the hilt.

The feeling of fullness was instantly gratifying as Felicity threw her head back into the pillows and sighed blissfully.

She turned him with ease, and after just a simple tap on his shoulder she was above him, straddled atop his throbbing cock with her hair spilling like ethereal tendrils over her pert breasts. His hands couldn’t be contained and soon they were all over her, mapping out every curve and leaving spindles of prickles in their wake.

Felicity began to ride him slowly by rocking her body up onto her knees before grinding back down. Her sex was dripping and thrumming from her past orgasms and each tiny clench was like a magnificent vice around his cock.

Filling the room with their breathy pants, they moved together in unison, touching and playing and kissing until their bodies were pasted in sweat and their climaxes imminent.

Her palms were hot against his chest, leaving beads of perspiration in the cracks of the leather hide as she leaned down and kissed him tenderly, but pulling away all too soon. He moaned at her absence as her nose nuzzled into his cheek and the back of her nails skidded up his slick neck.

“I am yours, take me, have my lips stutter your name and my body fall apart around you,” she whispered breathily into his ear. Her nails grazed his face as she looked up. “I am yours.”

They turned together on the bed, putting Felicity below him, before he surged forward. She gripped his shoulder with one hand, her fingers entwined in red, while the other hand turned ghoulish white as she hung onto their ornate bedframe.

Her legs coiled around his middle as he continued to plunge in and out of her pulsing sex, so fast that she struggled to catch her breath. Through heated moans and with their eyes fixated on each other, they both came apart; Felicity first and Thor, barely a moment behind her.

_And as for that Asgardian sperm…_

Their second child, a daughter with dark hair and curiously light eyes, was born some 9 months later. Her father named her Dalia.

Dalia and Leif were later joined by twins, two girls, Astrid and Runa, both spitting images of their mother. Another two daughters followed a few years later, Kari a fiery redhead, and then Thyra, named after her father, a little over a year after.

Finally, with five daughters and one son, they welcomed the very last edition.

And much to Leif’s relief, it was not another sister; but a brother who they called Eirikr, a Nordic name which carried with it the meaning ‘the one, ever powerful’.

Seven children filled the Palace halls with all the joyous laughter they could muster.

And even though they faced many a trial, both old and new, with the love and the trust they swore to each other the night they married, they fought back all of it.

_Even her._

**-fim-**

_**Meanings of the Children’s names:** _

Leif = descendent, heir (Leifr)  
Dalia = valley, flowers  
Astrid = beautiful goddess (Astridr)  
Runa = magic, secret lore   
Kari = pure  
Thyra = like thunder  
Eirikr = the one, ever powerful

_**Author's Note** _

**Wow, we did it.**   
**So much for a smutty, smutty one shot hey?**

**Anyway, thank you all SO much for coming on this crack journey to me. I honestly NEVER expected that anyone other than me and Ash would read this, but here were are… madness.**

**I do hope that you have enjoyed this, because I certainly have. I adore these two and even though it will never be more than a crazy pipe dream, I’m happy to be completely besotted and owned by this duo.**

**I make zero apologies.**

**Guys…. Also…. THEY HAD SEVEN CHILDREN.**

**SEVEN**   
**That sperm is potent.**

**Thank you again.**   
**xox**

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? Let me know.
> 
> Tumblr/Twitter @someonesaidcake


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